Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Indians 101: A Cowlitz canoe (museum exhibit)

 

at 5/8/25 8:15am

One of the first exhibits that greets visitors to the Cowlitz County Historical Museum in Kelso, Washington, is a Cowlitz canoe. For more than 12,000 years the Cowlitz Indians have lived in Western Washington along the Cowlitz River and other tributaries that flowed into the Columbia River. As a river people their traditional economy was based on fishing which was supplemented with the gathering of wild plants and hunting. Cowlitz canoes were used for fishing as well as for river travel. Behind the canoe is a mural by Portland artist Jennifer Cutshall showing the river and some Cowlitz longhouses. In creating the mural, the artist consulted historical descriptions and illustrations of Cowlitz villages so that the mural shows an accurate picture of a village. According to the Museum: “In the late 1700s, more than 40 Cowlitz villages dotted the shoreline of the Cowlitz River. Each village consisted of a number of cedar plank longhouses, each home to several families.” The canoe shown above was carved by Cowlitz Tribe member Robert Harju. It was carved for the museum. According to the Museum: “The canoe represents the type of canoe the Cowlitz people were using on the river in the 1800s. It has a ‘shovel nose,’ where someone could sit or stand and maneuver the craft with a pole.” Note: These photographs were taken on October 19, 2024. More American Indian museum exhibits Indians 101: Cowlitz Indians and the fur trade (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Coastal canoes (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Tulalip Canoes (Photo Diary) Indians 101: Suquamish Canoes (Photo Diary) Indians 101: Some repatriated Tlingit artifacts (photo diary) Indians 101: The Suquamish Museum (Photo Diary) Indians 101: Suquamish Basketry (Photo Diary) Indians 101: The Kalama totem poles (photo diary)

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Indians101, Museums, Photography, Washington, Canoes, CowlitzIndians, CowlitzCountyHistoricalMuseum] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 150 years ago, 1875

 

at 5/6/25 8:15am

Briefly described below are a few of the Canadian First Nations events of 150 years ago, 1875. North-West Mounted Police The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was formed in 1873 to administer law and order in the Northwest Territories (present day Alberta and Saskatchewan). By 1875 the North-West Mounted Police were operating out of four stations and collateral outposts. Fort Macleod had been built in southern Alberta to offset American incursions in the whiskey and fur trade. Fort Walsh had been established 160 miles to the east, just across the provincial border in Saskatchewan. Historian Jerome Greene, in his book Beyond Bear’s Paw: The Nez Perce Indians in Canada, writes: “Together, the presence of Forts Macleod and Walsh virtually ended the liquor traffic within a year.” Shown above is a model of the original fort exhibited in The Fort—Museum of the North West Mounted Police in Fort Macleod, Alberta. Métis In the early 1800s, the Métis had developed their own identity as a distinct people. The heart of Métis country was on the plains of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In their book Louis Riel, Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan write: “The Métis were a French-speaking people living in western Canada who drew their ancestry from both whites and Natives. They were the offspring of French fur traders and Native women who married during traders’ sojourns in Rupert’s Land.” The Canadian Parliament, under the influence of the Orangemen (Protestant militants) banished Métis Catholic leader Louis Riel from all British territories for a period of five years. Assiniboines During the 1870s, the Canadian government negotiated a series of treaties with the First Nations of the Northern Plains. In his book Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier anthropologist Hugh Brody writes: “Seven of the treaties, signed between 1870 and 1877, were negotiated for the explicit purpose of opening western Canada for settlement and for the new nation’s first transcontinental railway.” The homeland for the Siouan-speaking Assiniboines in the nineteenth century was on the Northern Plains in what is now the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and the American state of Montana. The primary political unit among the Assiniboines was the band and there was no political structure which tied the bands together into a tribe. Among the Assiniboines, the chief (huká) was selected by merit rather than heredity. In Saskatchewan, the Stonies (Assiniboines) under the leadership of Piapot, Pheasant Rump, and Striped Blanket (Ocean Man) signed an addition to Treaty No. 4 at Qu’Appelle. Buffalo Robe Trade During the first part of the nineteenth century, trade began changing as the European markets for beaver declined and the eastern American market for buffalo robes and buffalo hides increased. In response to this change in demand, the Hudson’s Bay Company shifted its emphasis from furs to buffalo robes. By the 1870s, the market for buffalo had shifted from buffalo robes to buffalo hides. There was an increasing demand for leather which was used as drive belts in factories. In his book Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Hunters, Trappers and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660-1870, Arthur Ray reports: “Whereas formerly the robes had to be taken during the winter season and took a considerable amount of know-how to prepare, hides were secured in the summer and required little skill to make them ready for trade. As a result, larger numbers of non-Indian groups became involved.” In Montreal in 1875, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s buffalo robe sale was a failure. In his chapter in Buffalo, J.E. Foster reports: “Supply had caught up with demand and passed it. The sale was unsuccessful as large numbers remained in the hands of the Company and the wholesalers they supplied.” The fall in prices did not, however, result in a decrease of production. Consumerism had become institutionalized in the Métis and Indian cultures, the material goods acquired in the buffalo robe trade were not luxuries, but necessities, and thus the hunters simply increased their efforts in an attempt to maintain their new lifestyles. Salmon cannery In British Columbia, a salmon cannery was built on the Skeena River using Native labor.   More First Nations History Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 100 years ago, 1925 Indians 101: The Northwest Coast Potlatch 100 years ago, 1921 Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 150 years ago, 1870 Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 350 years ago, 1670 Indians 101: The Canadian fur trade 200 years ago, 1821 Indians 301: Canadian First Nations and Jacques Cartier, 1534-1542 Indians 101: Champlain and the Canadian First Nations Indians 101: Crowfoot, Canadian Siksika leader

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Canada, FurTrade, History, Indians101, Metis, LouisRiel, North-WestMountedPolice, assiniboineindians, NativeAmericanNet] [Link to media]

— Ancient America 201: Effigy Mounds

 

at 5/3/25 8:15am

Our American and Canadian heritage begins long before Columbus supposedly “discovered” the Americas. For thousands of years people have lived in North America and they built cities and towns which were, and still are, architectural wonders. More than a thousand years ago, Indian people in the Midwest were making earthen structures—often referred to as “mounds”—in a variety of shapes. Many of these structures have geometric shapes: linear, conical, and oval. Others, however, seem to resemble birds and animals, both real and mythical. For this reason, these earthen structures have come to be known as Effigy Mounds. Archaeologists today use the term “Effigy Mound Culture” in referring to the thousands of effigy mounds that were constructed primarily in from about 600 CE to 1200 CE during the period which archaeologists call the Late Woodland, an era of profound culture transformation.   Following the decline of Hopewell, an earlier mound building culture, the Effigy Mound Culture emerged in the Upper Midwest (abbreviated at UMW in some sources). In their chapter in Explanations in Iconography: Ancient American Indian Art, Symbol, and Meaning, Bradley Lepper, Robert Boszhardt, James Duncan, and Carol Diaz-Granados write: “Between c. AD 700 and 1150, Native people constructed more than 3000 effigy mounds across that portion of the UMW lying between southern Lake Michigan and the upper Mississippi River valley. This area conforms to present day southern Wisconsin, and contiguous portions of northern Illinois, northeast Iowa, and southeastern Minnesota.” In the first decade of twenty-first century, the Wisconsin Historical Society documented 3200 animal-shaped earthen mounds in over 1,000 locations. With regard to the appearance of effigy mounds about 700 CE, David Hurst Thomas. in his section in The Native Americans: An Illustrated History, reports: “Huge earthen likenesses of oversized bears, birds, and serpents began to appear across the northeastern landscape.” David Hurst Thomas goes on to say: “At the ancient mounds near McGregor, Iowa, on high ground bypassed by the Ice Age glaciers, ancient Americans built two hundred massive mounds. Some are geometric cones and ridges. But the most impressive are the huge birds and the Marching Bears. Today, twenty-seven such effigy mounds survive along the Iowa-Wisconsin border.” Archaeologist Philip Salkin, in his chapter in Late Woodland Societies: Tradition and Transformation Across the Midcontinent, reports: “The distinctive feature of the Effigy Mound tradition was the construction of a variety of low mounds, often in the shape of animals.” Many of the earthworks were 30-40 meters (98-131 feet) in length. In his entry on the Effigy Mound Culture in A Dictionary of Archaeology, George Milner writes: “They built variously shaped mounds, and the name Effigy Mound Culture comes from the animal shapes of many mounds, although conical and linear mounds also occur.” While the term “culture” is often used in talking about the effigy mounds, relatively little is actually known about the lifestyles. According to Thomas Emerson and Anne Titebaum, in their chapter in Late Woodland Societies: Tradition and Transformation Across the Midcontinent: “Little is known about the lifestyle of the effigy mound builders beyond a general Late Woodland material assemblage that includes triangular points and cordmarked pottery categorized as Madison ware, a foraging subsistence pattern with little or no dependence on cultigens, and a presumed nonhierarchical political and social structure.” At this time in this area, people were generally engaged in hunting, fishing, and gathering. They lived in seasonal camps and used rockshelters for their winter quarters. In his chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, James Fitting writes:  “There are indications that Effigy Mound peoples had a generalized economic base similar to that of other northern early Late Woodland peoples.” In an article in American Antiquity, archaeologists James Theler and Robert Boszhardt report: “Effigy mound people initially followed a traditional seasonal round. In the spring, microbands left the interior and congregated in large macrobands at locations along major waterways with warm-season, resource-rich floodplains.” The construction of an effigy mound would usually begin by digging out a depression, a precise intaglio of the shape of the mound. Then successive layers of differently colored soils—called “ceremonial earths” by the archaeologists—would be laid down. The soils were brought to the mound in baskets. In between the ceremonial earths, the builders would lay down common soils and fire blackened strata. The fire blackened strata are black in color and rich in ash.  In their chapter in Late Woodland Societies: Tradition and Transformation Across the Midcontinent, archaeologists James Stoltman and George Christiansen report: “Multiple fire strata (black in color and rich in ash and charcoal) were commonly present, sometimes covering the entire surface of a mound at one particular stage and presumably marking episodes of especially intense ritual activity.”   When completed an effigy mound may have risen to five feet above the surrounding terrain. With regard to overall size, it is not uncommon to have mounds that are more than 100 feet in length. The Great Bear effigy in Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa, is 137 feet long and 3.5 feet high. In Wisconsin, the bird effigy mound on the Mendota State Hospital grounds has a wingspan of 624 feet. One effigy mound, now destroyed but mapped in the nineteenth century, had a wingspan of nearly 1,300 feet. There are eight different types of effigies which are generally recognized: panther, bear, bird, deer, buffalo, turtle, canine, and beaver. In addition to these animal effigies, about five human figures have been identified. There are some writers who have reported effigies of squirrel, raccoon, mink, lizard, and elephant. However, it must be understood that the current categorization of the effigies is based on the imaginations of people who didn’t build them. There is no guarantee that the name given to an effigy by today’s people accurately reflects the intentions of the people who constructed it. One of the most spectacular, and mystifying,effigy mounds is the Great Serpent Mound (33AD1) near Chillicothe, Ohio. This is one of the largest geoglyphs in the world. The mound is about 1,000 feet long and was constructed by carrying tons of yellow clay to the site in woven burden baskets. David Hurst Thomas reports: “The result is a flawlessly modeled serpent, wriggling northward, mouth agape, trying to swallow a massive egg. Although ancestors were buried nearby, the serpent mound was itself a deliberate religious effigy, not a place of burial.” Effigy mounds were usually constructed on an elevated area which overlooks streams and lakes. While an area may contain only a single mound, groups of up to 20-30 mounds are fairly common. The Harper’s Ferry Great Group in Iowa includes 895 mounds. Many of the mounds contain burials. Most frequently there is a single grave. While this grave usually contains only one individual, there are a number of cases with graves containing two or more individuals. In one instance—Mound 1 at Kratz Creek in Wisconsin—there is a mass burial of 45 individuals, and in another instance—Mound 66 at Riasbeck, there is a mass burial of 35 individuals. Charred human bones are occasionally found in the mounds, and the immense beds of ash at Kratz Creek suggest that cremation may have been common. At about 1200 CE, a 210-foot-long effigy in the shape of a panther was constructed in Ohio. Americans would later call this Alligator Mound (33LI5) in spite of the fact that Ohio was not known for its alligators. From an Indian perspective it is probably a representation of Underwater Panther, one of the supernatural beings that was common among the people of this region. The effigy mounds are undoubtedly interesting cultural features on the landscape, but what do we know about the people who built them? Why did they build them? What importance did they have for native culture? The archaeological record does not tell us a great deal about the Effigy Mound Culture. First, the mounds themselves contain very few artifacts. Unlike the Hopewell mound builders, the Effigy Mound people did not lavish grave goods upon their deceased. Most of the mound fills are sterile with regard to artifacts. Second, the Effigy Mounds were not constructed as a part of a city, village, or other community. They appear to be located well away from habitation sites and therefore the archaeologists do not have any of the day-to-day refuse which is so important in reconstructing lifestyles of the past. Third, it is difficult to associate a particular habitation site with the Effigy Mounds.  It would appear that at this time people are living in fairly small groups and so there are few, if any, intensively occupied sites which would provide archaeologists with data about their lives. The material culture of the Effigy Mound people includes ceramics, projectile points, chipped stone tools, ground stone tools, copper tools, and bone and antler tools. Fish were a part of their diet is shown by notched stone net sinkers (they used nets for catching fish) and barbed harpoon points. While wood does not survive well in the archaeological record, Effigy Mound woodworking abilities are shown through copper wedges/celts and ground stone adzes and celts. Animal hides used for clothing and housing do not survive in the archaeological record, but there is evidence of hideworking in tools such as deer bone beamers and bone and copper awls. These tools suggest that they hunted big game animals such as deer. Effigy Mound people also made clay elbow pipes showing that smoking was a part of their lifestyle. There are a number of things missing from their cultural inventory. First, there is the absence of grinding stones, hoes, and other tools normally associated with intensive plant collecting, processing, and/or cultivation. There is some evidence that cultivated plants, including corn, were grown and consumed, but it appears that there was little reliance on this food source. Corn may have been a ritual food rather than a part of the everyday diet. Second, the habitation sites do not have any storage pits or structures. This suggests that habitation sites were temporary, seasonal sites which would be consistent with hunting and gathering rather than agriculture. Third, there is an absence of non-local materials, such as marine shells and exotic lithics (such as obsidian). This may be interpreted as a lack of trade with other people. All of this has led archaeologists to describe the Effigy Mound people as having a foraging subsistence pattern (that is, they were hunters and gatherers) with little dependence on agriculture. The data seems to suggest that they had a nomadic lifestyle. The seasonal cycle of the Effigy Mound Culture people involved: harvesting nuts and deer in the late fall, winter, and early spring. fishing and gathering resources from a lowland area in the late spring, summer, and early fall. Planting gardens in late spring. Building mounds in the summer. As a nomadic, foraging people it is therefore assumed that they had an egalitarian society which included a nonhierarchical political system.   In West-Central Illinois, the effigy mounds may have been the place where members of different groups could meet to exchange information, maintain alliances, and initiate exogamous relationships. While raiding or warfare appears to have been common, interaction and ritual at such sites would have provided opportunities to minimize hostilities. It is generally assumed that the effigy mounds are somehow religious in nature, symbolic of the mythologies and ritual practices of the people who built them. With regard to this religion, Bradley Lepper, Robert Boszhardt, James Duncan, and Carol Diaz-Granados write: “It involved three premises: 1) all matter shared an animating or spirit force originating from a mysterious sacred, eternal being; 2) this force could not be destroyed and could migrated from one entity to another; 3) some entities became particular repositories for this force, possessing more of it than others.” One traditional view expressed by many archaeologists is that the effigy mound groups served as integrative mechanisms, the institutional means for coordinating and articulating the cultural activities of numerous hunting and gathering societies. By coming together during the summer, different bands would be able to reinforce their social bonds. Burying the dead in the mounds may have been one way to reinforce this association and to tie the groups together. Some archaeologists have suggested that the Effigy Mound people used both mound construction and rock art as a way of sanctifying the land. In other words, these activities were a way of making the land sacred and associating themselves with this sacred land. While all of the evidence at the present time suggests that these elaborate, artistic structures were built by hunters and gatherers—disproving the commonly held idea that only agricultural people could build great structures which require the coordinated efforts of many people—we don’t really know why they were built, nor do we really know the role which they played in the Effigy Mound Culture. More Ancient America Ancient America: A very brief overview of Adena burials (500 BCE - 100 BCE) Ancient America 201: A very brief overview of the Hopewell moundbuilders Ancient America: A very short overview of the Fort Ancient tradition Ancient America: Fort Ancient offerings (museum tour) Ancient America: Linking people to the cosmos in ancient Ohio Ancient America: The Old Copper People Ancient America: The Paleo-Indian Period in Texas (prior to 8000 BCE) Ancient America: Ohio Ceremonial Earthworks (museum tour)

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Archaeology, AncientAmerica, effigymounds, NativeAmericanNetworks, AncientAmerica201, GreatSerpentMound] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: The Wampanoag War of 1675-1676

 

at 5/1/25 8:15am

The English invasion of North America during the seventeenth century was characterized by cultural misunderstandings, violence, and organized warfare. In looking at the causes of the wars between the English Puritans and the Indians in New England, Wilcomb Washburn, in his chapter on seventeenth-century wars in the Handbook of North American Indians, writes: “Traditional Indian tribal culture thus became a natural enemy that must be destroyed not for faults that its members may have committed but for existing as an example of a society contradicting the assumptions of Puritan society.” Within this framework, the English viewed Indians as a kind of wild vermin to be exterminated. With regard to the English and their policies toward the Indians, historian Wilbur R. Jacobs, in his chapter on British Indian policies in the Handbook of North American Indians, writes: “Native American people were seen as temporary owners of the North American continent rich in minerals, furs, fish, agricultural produce (maize, squash, and other food plants domesticated by Indians).” He also says: “Overall policy allowed no special place for the American Indian, who was regarded as a kind of nonperson.” In their book Indian Wars, Historians Robert Utley and Wilcomb Washburn sum up the English approach to Indians by saying: “The English showed little hesitation about attacking the Indians for whatever reason.”  In 1675, pushed by the Puritans who demanded that the Indians obey Puritan law and who severely punished the Indians who did not, the Wampanoag leader Metacom (known as Philip to the English) asserted the sovereignty of his people by going to war. As a result of this war – commonly called King Philip’s War – many of the smaller Indian nations were destroyed or scattered. According to historian Douglas Edward Leach, in his chapter on colonial wars in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 4: History of Indian-White Relations: “Philip may have been one of the first Indian leaders to catch a vision of a pan-Indian movement to halt English expansion and possibly drive the intruders back whence they had come.” The prelude to the war was a murder trial. A converted Christian Indian named John Sassamon had told the English governor that Philip was plotting against the English and that he feared for his life. A short while later, Sassamon was found dead beneath the ice of Assawompsett Pond. The Puritans believed that Sassamon was murdered because he was a spy for the Puritans. Sassamon had served as Philip’s secretary. Three Wampanoags—Tobias (one of Philip’s counselors), Wampapaquan (Tobias’ son), and Mattashunnamo (a warrior)—were tried by the Puritans, found guilty, and hung. The executions of these three men stirred many Wampanoags to advocate violence against the Europeans. The English village of Swansea, on Wampanoag land, was evacuated and then looted by Wampanoag warriors. In his Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492-1890, Jerry Keenan reports: “Faced with conducting a war he was probably not ready to wage, Philip nevertheless launched a series of raids that virtually paralyzed the English settlements.” Metacom evaded capture by basing his raids in the Pocasset territory of the female sachem Weetamoo (his sister-in-law). From here he carried out successful raids against five English towns. Jerry Keenan reports: “Operating from deep within the Pocasset swamp, Philip completely frustrated a combined Plymouth-Massachusetts Bay campaign.” Humiliated by these defeats, the English Christian ministers concluded that God was unhappy with them because of the wearing of wigs and the tolerance shown to the Quakers. Historian Michael Oberg, in his book Uncas: First of the Mohegans, reports: “The number of Indian groups taking part in attacks increases with each native success, and the colonists’ own offensives against the Algonquians proved little more than ill-led and poorly executed exercises in futility that killed needlessly large numbers of Englishmen.” With regard to Metacom’s Wampanoag military strategy, Glen LaFantasie, in an article in American History, writes: “If his plan was to fight the English rather than submit to their ways, his military strategy revealed an utter lack of careful thought or purposeful design.” In his book American Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conflict,  Henry Bowden puts it this way: “His war started prematurely and was conducted sporadically, but those who flocked to him succeeded in waging one of the most devastating and costly wars in American history.” While the English believe that Philip commands a large intertribal force, he actually has about 300 warriors, nearly all of whom are Wampanoag. Wilcomb Washburn writes: “While the conventional view of the war has seen it as a conspiracy of all New England Indians against the English, there is little hard evidence to suggest that this is so.” In his book The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America, James Swanson writes: “The war was the last serious attempt by the Indians to push back the ever-encroaching English off Native lands.” In 1676, English forces attacked Wetamoo’s village. Wetamoo drowned while trying to escape down the Taunton River by canoe. The English cut off her head and displayed it on a pole at Taunton The English captured Metacom’s wife, Wootonekanuske, and his nine-year-old son. They were held in a prison in Plymouth. The Puritan clergy debated the fate of Philip’s son: many felt that he should be executed, but others felt that the Bible said that no one should be executed for the sins of their fathers. After much debate, the boy was sold into slavery instead of being executed. In her book The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity, historian Jill Lepore writes: “Slavery was considered to be just this kind of a compassionate compromise: notorious Indians, like Philip himself, were executed; harmless enemies, mainly women and young children, were forced into servitude for a period of years; and those who were neither notorious enough to be hanged nor harmless enough to remain in New England were routinely sold into foreign slavery.” On the run to escape the English, Metacom was returning to his father’s old capital at Montaup when he stumbled into an ambush in which he was shot by an Indian ally of the English and killed. The English drawed and quartered the body and took his head to Plymouth where it was displayed to the public for 20 years. The Christian preacher Cotton Mather recalled that Metacom’s head:  “… was carried in triumph to Plymouth, where it arrived on the very Day that the Church there was keeping a Solemn Thanksgiving to God. God sent ‘em in the Head of a Leviathan for a Thanksgiving-Feast.” The English colonists viewed the war as a rebellion rather than as a war against a sovereign nation and thus those Indians who were captured were not considered as prisoners of war, but rather as criminals who were charged with treason and murder and tried in civil courts. Historian James Drake, in an article in the New England Quarterly, reports: “All of the Puritan colonies in King Philip’s War decided the fates of separatists by first trying to measure their degree of guilt and then doling out punishment according to the dictates of law and morality.” The Wampanoags were nearly exterminated and only 400 survived. An estimated 3,000 Indians were killed during the war. Mohegan In Connecticut, Mohegan sachem Uncas pledged his assistance to the English in their war against the Wampanoags. His son Owaneco and 50 warriors joined the English forces. In one battle, the Mohegan warriors overtook Metacom’s Wampanoag warriors, killing 30 men and capturing another. The Mohegans, however, did not pursue the Wampanoag after the battle and their English allies did not wish to proceed without them. Niantic In Rhode Island, English troops from Massachusetts and Connecticut attacked and burned the village of Niantic leader Queen Quaiapen. They destroyed 150 wigwams, killed seven Indians, and captured nine others. Niantic leader Quaiapen was also known as Magnus, Matantuck, and Sunke Squaw. She was the sister of Ninigret and the widow of Makanno. She has been described as one of the most influential sachems among the Narragansetts. Narragansett The Narragansetts remained neutral during the war, but rumors in Boston claimed that the Narragansetts were harboring Wampanoag refugees, including Metacom. In response to these rumors, English soldiers attacked a fortified Narragansett village and killed an estimated 1,000 Indians. In the months that followed, English soldiers continued to pursue the Narragansetts. Jerry Keenan writes: “Losses on both sides were heavy before the English managed to burn the stockade, driving the inhabitants out. Although the attack was a tactical success, it forced the Narragansetts into an alliance with Philip.” In Rhode Island, the Narragansetts who were friendly with the English signed a treaty in which they agreed to deliver Metacom’s subjects dead or alive. To ensure peace, certain sachems were to be held captive by the English. Other Indians In Massachusetts, some English colonists used the war as an excuse to vent their hatred for Indians. In an article in the New England Quarterly, G. E. Thomas reports that: “Captain Samuel Mosely, one of the most violent Indian haters, on the basis of later disproved allegations against the Indians of Marlborough, fasted ropes around the necks of fifteen Christian Indian men and marched them to Boston, where they were threatened by a lynch mob.” In another incident, after questioning an Indian woman, Captain Mosely and his men had her torn to pieces by their dogs. In Massachusetts, many English colonists believed that all Indians were involved in King Philip’s War even though many groups, particularly the praying villages (i.e. villages for Christian Indians), had declared their neutrality. The English colonists confined all “friendly” Indians to a few of the eastern praying towns and the colonists confiscated the crops and tools in the praying towns of Wamesit, Hassanamisset, Magunkaquag, and Chabanakongkomun. The Indians were confined to the village limits on penalty of death.   The colonists, however, continued to accuse the Christian Indians of supporting Metacom. The residents of the village of Okommakamesit were arrested and marched to jail in Boston. The court ordered the arrest of Wamesit and Punkapoag men. To avoid arrest the Penacook sachem Wannalancer and his followers fled up the Merrimac River. The Naticks were forced from their homes and interred on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The Punkapoags were also sent to Deer Island. The setting is described as a “windswept bit of rock” with little fuel and little shelter from the cold sea wind. Historian Daniel Mandell, in his book Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts, writes: “Despite English hostility and abuse, Indian men on the island clamored to help in the war against Metacom, showing their deep loyalty to the Christian colony, an older dislike of the Wampanoags, or perhaps a strong desire to escape the conditions of the island.” About 100 men enlisted in the colonial army as scouts. More American Indian histories Indians 201: American Indians and New Sweden Indians 201: Plains Indians and the Spanish in the early 1600s Indians 201: American Indians and the establishment of Jamestown Indians 101: The English right to rule Indians in the 17th century Indians 101: The English and Indian land in the 17th century Indians 101: Indian rights under 17th century English rule Indians 101: The French and American Indians in the 17th century Indians 101: The Dutch and American Indians in the 17th century

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, History, Indians101, KingPhilipsWar, NativeAmericanNetroots, Puritans, Uncas, MoheganIndians, Metacom, WampanoagIndians, NianticIndians, QueenQuaiapen, JohnSassamon, PocassetIndians, NarragansettIndians, PunkapoagIndians, NatickIndians] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: Attempt at Shawnee removal 200 years ago, 1825

 

at 4/29/25 8:15am

During the first part of the nineteenth century the United States followed policies which viewed American Indians as impediments to the economic growth of the country. At the beginning of the century, President Thomas Jefferson had expressed the idea that the future of the United States depended on acquisition of land for the rapidly growing population. Thus, the future of the country depended on dispossessing the Indians of their land. Under this Jeffersonian view, American Indians were not seen as being welcome in the United States and it was felt that they should be removed from their ancient homelands and moved to lands west of the Mississippi River. In 1824, President James Monroe presented Congress with a plan for “civilizing” Indians by sending them voluntarily west of the Mississippi River. By 1825, the United States was pursuing a policy of manifest destiny to spread out between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. In their chapter in North American Indian Wars, James Davidson et al write: “Many Americans had long believed that their country had a special, even divine mission. The Protestant version of this conviction could be traced back to John Winthrop, who assured his fellow Puritans that God intended them to build a model ‘city upon a hill’ for the rest of the world to emulate.” The Shawnees are relatively well-known in American history because of their involvement in eighteenth-century and nineteenth century wars in the greater Ohio area. The Shawnee language belongs to the Central Algonquian language family and their name, Shawnee, means “Southerner”, reflecting the fact that they lived to the south of other Algonquian-speaking Indian nations. The Shawnees, like many other Algonquian-speaking people, engaged in a combination of farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. Farming was of secondary economic importance and contributed less than half of their food. The Shawnees used slash and burn agriculture. The fields would be cleared and then burned so that the wood ash would fertilize the soil. Corn would be planted first. When the corn was about a foot high, beans, squash, and pumpkin were interplanted with the corn. The Shawneess were a confederacy of five political units: Chillicothe (Chalahgawtha), Hathawekela (also spelled as Thawekila or Thawegila), Kispoko (Kispokotha), Mequachake (Mekoche or Maykujay), and Piqua (Pekowi). In his book The Shawnees and the War for America, Colin Calloway reports: “The Shawnees traditionally comprised five divisions, though it is not certain whether these divisions originally constituted different tribes, which came together to form the Shawnees, or if they developed during their migrations.” Among the Shawnees there were two kinds of chiefs. The peace chiefs were responsible for domestic order. This was an office which could be inherited. On the other hand, the war chief was an earned office. To be considered a war chief, a young man was expected to organize and lead (to persuade other young men to follow him) four raids, bringing back honor and all of his men. According to Ian Steele, in an article in Ethnohistory: “A raid was considered successful only if the entire raiding party returned unhurt, and if it brought back at least one scalp or prisoner.” In 1824, Shawnee leader Captain Lewis (Quitewepea) met with Indian agent William Clark and the Cherokees in Missouri to discuss the possibility of Shawnee removal from Ohio to lands west of the Mississippi. Captain Lewis and the Cherokee were then sent to Washington, D.C. to present their plans to the President. In 1825, President James Monroe instructed the Indian agent to assemble all of the Ohio Shawnees at Wapakoneta when Shawnee leader Captain Lewis returns from Washington, D.C. The government intended to purchase all remaining Shawnee land in Ohio and to remove the tribe west of the Mississippi River. In his book The Shawnee Prophet, David Edmunds reports: “Black Hoof and other village chiefs were jealous of Lewis, and resented his attempts to represent the tribe in Washington.” Thus, when Captain Lewis returned to Ohio, Black Hoof used his influence to sabotage the plans for removal. In order to strengthen their arguments for removal, the American persuaded the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa to return from Canada where he had been living since 1811. The government envisioned settling the Shawnee on new lands in the west, away from the corrupt influence of American settlers, and this had some appeal to Tenskwatawa. The Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa attended the tribal meeting to advocate removal, but most of the Shawnees were determined to remain in Ohio. Following the presentation by the government, the Shawnees met among themselves for several days. David Edmunds reports: “Only about two dozen younger warriors, led by William Perry, or Pemthata, a minor chief from Wapakoneta, were interested in the government’s proposals, and they seemed reluctant to speak in opposition to Black Hoof.” Black Hoof informed the Americans that the Shawnees were not interested in removal, and furthermore, he told them, if they wanted to remove, they would do so on their own. More American Indian histories Indians 101: A very short overview of the Shawnee Indians Indians 101: American Indians and Mexico 200 years ago, 1825 Indians 101: American Indians and the federal government 200 years ago, 1825 Indians 101: American Indian battles and skirmishes 200 years ago, 1824 Indians 101: American Indian tribes 200 years ago, 1824 Indians 201: The Indian Removal Act Indians 101: Manifest Destiny Begins Indians 101: Who Owns the Land?

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, History, Indians101, NativeAmericanNetroots, ShawneeIndians] [Link to media]

— Ancient America: Utah's Archaic Indians

 

at 4/26/25 8:15am

Ten thousand years ago, Native American people in what is now Utah had a lifeway that was centered around a pattern of seasonal wandering, the hunting of animals, and the gathering of plants. The time period which archaeologists call the Archaic Period in Utah lasted for a long time: from about 10,000 years ago to 1,500 years ago. With regard to the designation Archaic, Alan Schroedl, in an article in the Utah Historical Quarterly, writes: “The name Archaic is not meant to imply a backward or outmoded style of life; on the contrary, the Archaic lifeway was the most dynamic and flexible mode of adaptation that ever developed in the New World. Based on a pattern of regional specialization, it was the most persistent of all the known technological stages in North America.” With regard to the Archaic Period in Utah, Robert McPherson, in his chapter in A History of Utah’s American Indians, writes: “Over this long period of time, Native American groups have survived in an austere environment that required an intimate knowledge of the land and its resources.” Alan Schroedl also writes: “This lifeway was centered around a pattern of seasonal wandering, the hunting of animals, and the gathering of plants.” In an article in the Utah Historical Quarterly, Joel Janetski explains: “Particularly important were small seeds and nuts (grass seeds, pickleweed, bulrush, etc.) and both large and small animals (mountain sheep, deer, antelope, rabbits, ground squirrels, and others). Seeds were collected in tremendous numbers using baskets of various kinds and were processed into flour with milling stones.” The milling stones are, of course, part of the archaeological record that provides us with clues about the lifeways of archaic peoples. In his book Comb Ridge and its People: The Ethnohistory of a Rock, Robert McPherson writes: “The Archaic people appear to have been all business, preoccupied with survival, capturing and consuming everything edible from lizards to prickly pears to mice to grasses to bighorn sheep.” By 7500 BCE, the Utah Native Americans were engaged in a roving pattern of hunting and gathering and occupying settlements seasonally. Some of the plant foods being used by the people at this time included seeds from pickleweed. They were also hunting big game animals including deer, pronghorn antelope, mountain sheep, elk, and buffalo. They were trapping small game, such as rabbit, with netting. The Archaic Period in Utah ends with the emergence of the Fremont people in 1500 BCE.  The archaeological evidence of human habitation in Utah during the Archaic Period comes primarily from caves and rockshelters. This does not necessarily mean that these were used as their primary homes, but rather the preservation of materials was better in these locations and thus the archaeologists are more likely to find evidence here. Briefly described below are a few of Utah’s Archaic Period archaeological sites. Danger Cave Some of the earliest evidence of Native Americans in Utah comes from Danger Cave. Archaeological evidence shows that American Indians were camping here by 9000 BCE. They were lighting fires on the cave’s sandy floor and leaving a scattering of stone flakes and milling stones. North Creek Shelter Indian people were occupying the North Creek Shelter on the western edge of the Escalante Valley by 7,690 BCE. This is an area where three streams come together to form the Escalante River. They had an oval-shaped hearth toward the back of the shelter. Among the food resources which they were exploiting was deer. Old Man Cave Indian people were occupying Old Man Cave by 6900 BCE. The plants being used by the people at this site included prickly pear, sand dropseed, marsh elder, sunflower, and goosefoot. Indian rice grass was also an important food.   Hogup Cave In 6350 BCE, Indian people began to use Hogup Cave as a base camp. Here they gathered plants for food, fuel, and for making baskets and mats. They also hunted waterfowl, small mammals, and larger mammals. The larger mammals included pronghorn antelope, mule deer, mountain sheep, and bison. Among the artifacts left at Hogup Cave were engraved pebbles. Archaeologists are somewhat puzzled about the use of the odd little stone slabs and pebbles. They were neatly engraved with some tough stone tool; the simple designs being cut rather carefully in any of several geometric patterns. Sudden Shelter By 6000 BCE, Indian people were occupying the Sudden Shelter located in Ivie Creek Canyon. Hunting was the major activity carried out by the people who occupied this site. Sudden Shelter was a base camp from which the people were able to exploit a wide variety of resources. One of the main animals being hunted there was the mule deer. By 4300 BCE, the Indian people who occupied Sudden Shelter had changed their patterns of resource exploitation. They were now using slab-lined fire pits and milling stones, indicating that plant resources had become more important. The most heavily utilized plant resource at this time was goosefoot. At this time Sudden Shelter was occupied primarily between April and September. By 2600, the Indian people at Sudden Shelter were using more amaranth. In addition, they were hunting more bighorn sheep. While the technology used by the Indian people at Sudden Shelter was similar in many respects to the hunters and gatherers who occupied this area later, the size of the local group at Sudden Shelter appears to have been smaller.   Deluge Shelter By 5000 BCE, Indian people were occupying the Deluge Shelter on Jones Hole Creek. The people at this site were hunting mule deer. Spotten Cave About 4000 BCE, there was a dramatic increase in the number of sites occupied by Indian people. There was a broadening of settlement patterns with an increased emphasis on the exploitation of resources in the upland zones. At this time, Indian people were using Spotten Cave at the south end of Utah Valley. Spotten Cave was used as a temporary stopover as the people moved from the Goshen Valley bottoms to the uplands of Long Ridge or the Wasatch Front. Thorne Cave In 2220 BCE, Indian people began to occupy Thorne Cave in the Uinta Basin. They were hunting jackrabbit, cottontail, antelope, beaver, and bighorn sheep. American Fork Cave By 1700 BCE, Indian people were now using American Fork Cave. The cave was used as a base camp from which mountain sheep were hunted in the steep and broken country of American Fork Canyon. More Ancient America Ancient America: The Marmes Rockshelter Ancient America: Paquime, trading center between the Southwest and Mexico Ancient America: American Indians at Rancho La Brea Ancient America: The Halliday Site in Illinois Ancient America: The Meadowcroft Rockshelter Ancient America: The Paleo-Indian Period in Texas (prior to 8000 BCE) Ancient America: Paleoindian stone tools in Washington's Plateau area Ancient America: The Columbia Plateau, 2000 to 500 BCE

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Archaeology, NativeAmericanNetroots, Utah, AncientAmerica, AmericanForkCave, ThorneCave, SpottenCave, DelugeShelter, SuddenShelter, HogupCave, OldManCave, NorthCreekShelter, DangerCave] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: Cowlitz Indians and the fur trade (museum exhibit)

 

at 4/24/25 8:15am

For more than 12,000 years the Cowlitz Indians have lived in Western Washington along the Cowlitz River and other tributaries that flowed into the Columbia River. As a river people their traditional economy was based on fishing which was supplemented with the gathering of wild plants and hunting. Cowlitz canoes were used for fishing as well as for river travel. Shown above is a map showing Cowlitz territory. In his book History of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, Roy Wilson reports: “Aboriginally, the Cowlitz had the largest land-base of all Western Washington tribes.” The name Cowlitz means “The People Who Seek Their Medicine Spirit” and identifies them as a spirit seeking people.In their book A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest, Robert Ruby, John Brown, and Cary Collins explain the origins of the name this way: “The name ‘Cowlitz’ is said to mean ‘capturing the medicine spirit” because the Cowlitzes visited a small prairie on the Cowlitz River, a Columbia River affluent in Washington State, to commune with the spirit world and receive ‘medicine’ power.” The Cowlitz Indians had their first recorded contact with Europeans in 1811 when Gabriel Franchère (1786-1863) led a Pacific Fur Company fur-trading party up the Cowlitz River. At this time, beaver pelts were valuable in the European markets where they were used in making hats. The English (Hudson’s Bay Company), Canadian (North West Company), and American (Pacific Fur Company) traded metal items, guns, glass beads, tobacco, and other items to obtain beaver pelts and other furs from American Indian hunters and trappers. The Cowlitz County Historical Museum in Kelso, Washington, includes an exhibit on the fur trade. According to the Museum: “Native Americans incorporated the beads, thimbles, and metals they got through trade into clothing decoration, necklaces, and bracelets. They sometimes used these new materials alongside the shells, quills, and feathers that had been used in similar ways for thousands of years.” Shown above are baby moccasins decorated with glass trade beads. These were made in the mid-nineteenth century. Shown above are trade items from the early 1800s. Shown above is a beaded bag made in the 1880s. The use of flower designs was inspired by European patterns. Shown above is the iconic Hudson’s Bay blanket. The stripes on the end, known as “points”, indicate the trading value of the blanket. A four-point blanket is a fairly expensive blanket. (These blankets are still being made and sold.) Shown above are tobacco twists. Shown above is a rum bottle (1845-1850). Alcohol was both an important trade item and a social lubricant used in trading sessions. The alcohol used in trade was often highly diluted and sometimes “seasoned” with other materials. Shown above is a small beaded bag with metal cones from the 1840s.   Shown above is an example of trade beads being used along with traditional beads. Note: These photographs were taken on October 19, 2024. More American Indian stories Indians 101: American Indian trade goods (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Plateau Indian Tourist Trade (Photo Diary) Indians 101: A Cowlitz canoe (museum tour) Indians 101: The Tulalip and Europeans (Photo Diary) Indians 101: A Chehalis Indian Artifact Collection (Photo Diary) Indians 101: Some Northwest Coast Indian artifacts (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Oregon's Clatsop Indians (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Suquamish Basketry (Photo Diary)

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, FurTrade, History, Indians101, Museums, Photography, Washington, HudsonsBayCompany, CowlitzIndians, NorthWestCompany, PacificFurCompany, CowlitzCountyHistoricalMuseum] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: American Indians 300 years ago, 1725

 

at 4/22/25 8:15am

At the beginning of eighteenth century, Indian nations were interacting with many European nations which had invaded the Americas and had claimed for themselves Indian land. By 1725 the Europeans, particularly the French, were moving inland and were trading with the Indian nations of the central and southern Plains. Briefly described below are some of the American Indian events of 300 years ago, 1725. Visiting Paris One of the customs of the European invaders was to take a select group of Indians, often chiefs, back to Europe to impress them with European wonders. When the Indians returned home, they could tell tales of the magnificent European culture which would help reduce resistance to the European invasion. In 1725 a group of Central Plains Indians, including one Otoe, one Osage, one Missouri chief, one Missouri young woman, one Illinois, one Chicagou, and one Metchegamias, were taken to Paris, France. There they met with the Director of the Company of the Indies, and the Duke and Duchess de Bourbon. The chiefs were given a complete French outfit which included a blue dress coat, silver ornaments, and a plumed hat trimmed in silver. The Indians were then presented to King Louis XV, and they performed a dance at the opera. The French King gave each of the chiefs a royal medallion, a rifle, a sword, and a watch. Kiowa The modern horse spread from the Spanish settlements in the southwest. Following trade routes from Taos Pueblo, the horse was traded to the Utes and the Comanches and then to their linguistic relatives, the Paiutes and the Shoshones. With the horse, the vast buffalo herds of the Great Plains became a great “supermarket” used by many different tribes. This also meant that the potential for conflict over hunting territories increased and subsequently there was an increase in inter-tribal warfare. The Kiowas speak a language which linguists classify as a part of the Tanoan language family and is thus related to the Pueblos of Taos, Jemez, Isleta, and San Idelfonso in New Mexico. By 1725, the Kiowas in Kansas had obtained enough horses to become mounted buffalo hunters. They were obtaining their horses from the Wichitas and Caddos.   Among the Kiowas, there were three kinds of horses: (1) those which were used as pack animals, (2) those which were ridden by the family, and (3) those which were used for hunting, war, and racing. According to anthropologist Bernard Mishkin, in his book Rank and Warfare Among the Plains Indians: “The average household of some five adults with a well-balanced herd of ideal size owned approximately ten pack animals, five riding animals and two to five buffalo horses.” Yanktonai Dakota In North Dakota, the Yanktonai Dakotas established their winter villages on the James River. Piankashaw In Indiana, the Piankashaws moved their village from a location near the present-day city of Lafayette downstream to a location near the mouth of the Vermilion River. More American Indian histories Indians 101: Natchez Indians 300 years ago, 1725 Indians 101: American Indians and the English 300 years ago, 1724 Indians 101: American Indians and Europeans 300 years ago, 1723 Indians 101: Indians and Europeans 300 years ago, 1722 Indians 101: American Indians 300 years ago, 1721 Indians 101: The Cherokees 300 years ago, 1721 Indians 201: The Tuscaroras join the Iroquois League Indians 201: The Iroquois Peace, 1700-1713

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, History, Indians101, NativeAmericanNetroots, TaosPueblo, UteIndians, PaiuteIndians, ShoshoneIndians, CaddoIndians, illinoisindians, KiowaIndians, ComancheIndians, OsageIndians, WichitaIndians, PiankashawIndians, OtoeIndians, MissouriIndians, ChicagouIndians, MetchegamiasIndians, Tanoanlanguagefamily, YanktonaiIndians] [Link to media]

— Feds okay copper mine on sacred Apache land while Supreme Court case is pending

 

at 4/18/25 9:03am

Trump’s stopping offshore wind projects and opening up sensitive public lands to development, so I wasn’t surprised to read that he’s pushing ahead with a copper mine at Oak Flat, an ecological jewel in Tonto National Forest about an hour east of Phoenix. Walk around the city and you might see signs saying “Save Oak Flat.” The signs have been there for years as environmentalists, religious leaders, and many Native American tribes have battled different administrations, courts, and Resolution Copper for at least two decades. The defenders of Oak Flat hope to stop a massive mine on sacred land, a blessed place near the San Carlos Apache Reservation where it’s said tribal guardians carry messages to and from the Creator, and where young girls’ coming-of-age sunrise ceremonies are held. Some compare Oak Flat to Mount Sinai for Jews.   “Trump’s decision to launch the Oak Flat land exchange shows his complete disdain for religious liberty, Native American rights and the protection of public lands," said Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate for [the Center for Biological Diversity]. “Oak Flat is central to the spiritual and cultural practices of the Apache people and other tribes in the region.” He said it is also a biological gem, home to rare desert ecosystems, springs and wildlife. I’ve camped at Oak Flat Campground for decades and attended one of Resolution Copper’s community meetings about ten years ago, just after the US Forest Service approved the land swap that would turn over the area to the British-Australian mining company. Resolution Copper says they revised their plans after meeting with community and tribal members, but the fact remains the ground will eventually cave in and leave a crater two miles wide and a thousand feet deep. Resolution of course champions “jobs” at the same time DOGE is firing workers at the VA in nearby Globe, Arizona. I guess jobs digging up sensitive, sacred land are more important than those assisting veterans.    Trump’s moving ahead with the land grab even as the US Supreme Court deliberates whether to take up the case filed by the group Apache Stronghold in 2021. This Court has gone out of its way to protect religious liberties in other areas, but given the Court’s makeup Resolution Copper is confident and ready to dig, while Oak Flat’s defenders vow to continue their 20-year campaign to preserve their place of worship.   “The U.S. government is rushing to give away our spiritual home before the courts can even rule — just like it’s rushed to erase Native people for generations,” said Apache Stronghold leader Wendsler Nosie. “This is the same violent pattern we have seen for centuries. We urge the Supreme Court to protect our spiritual lifeblood and give our sacred site the same protection given to the holiest churches, mosques, and synagogues throughout this country.” The jobs and copper are temporary at best, but pursuing them would destroy a world of beauty and deep spirituality forever.

[Author: Mother Mags] [Category: Apache, Arizona, Copper, Environment, ForestService, Indian, Indigenous, Mining, NativeAmerican, Religion, OakFlat, SanCarlosApache, WendslerNosie] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: Some Columbia Gorge Indian artifacts (museum exhibit 3)

 

at 4/17/25 9:03am

The Columbia Gorge Museum in Stevenson, Washington has a large gallery dedicated to the First Peoples of the Columbia Gorge: Watlalas (Wahlalas; also known as the Cascade Indians), Wascos, and Wishrams. In this exhibit, most of the artifacts are unlabeled. This appears to be a stone net sinker. This may be another stone net sinker. Shown above is a stone pestle. The center object appears to be a stone awl or drill; the other two are arrowheads. Shown above is a typical arrowhead display put together by collectors. It doesn’t really tell us anything about ancient Indians. Shown above is a stone bowl. Shown above is an atlatl (spear thrower). Note: These photographs were taken on October 18, 2024. More American Indian museum exhibits Indians 101: Some Columbia Gorge Indian artifacts (museum exhibit 1) Indians 101: Some Columbia Gorge Indian artifacts (museum exhibit 2) Indians 101: Busy Fingers in the Columbia Gorge (museum exhibit) Indians 101: A collection of Plateau Indian artifacts (museum exhibit) Indians 101: A display of Plateau Indian beadwork (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Some Plateau Indian artifacts (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Sanpoil and Wanapan Indians (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Paiute Home Life (museum exhibit)

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Indians101, Museums, NativeAmericanNetroots, Photography, Washington, PlateauIndians, WascoIndians, ColumbiaGorgeMuseum, WatlalaIndians, WishramIndians, CascadeIndians, WahlalaIndians] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: American Indians 350 years ago, 1675

 

at 4/15/25 8:15am

By 1675, many American Indians were aware of the European invasion of the Americas. European trade goods—metal artifacts, glass beads, cloth, and guns—were already having an impact on Native cultures; refugees, displaced from their ancient homelands, were seeking new homes, and bringing with them tales of the invaders’ inhospitality; and finally European diseases, such as smallpox, were infecting Native people long before actual physical contact between Indians and Europeans. Briefly described below are a few American Indian events of 350 years ago, in 1675. English Colonists In his book Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960, Edward Spicer summarizes the English approach to American Indians this way: “In contrast with Spain, England had conceived of the Indians of North America as continuing to exist as separate nations outside the political organization of Britain. The British government organized no campaign for conversion of Indians to Christianity. It proposed to acquire land for colonization by purchase, by simple appropriation of unoccupied or sparsely settled areas, or by conquest and treaty where necessary.” The first English colonies included Jamestown (1607), Plymouth (1620), Massachusetts Bay (1630), and the Colony of Maryland (1634). One of the conflicts between the English colonists and the Indians centered around land and the different cultural views regarding land. In their book Native American Heritage, Merwyn Garbarino and Robert Sasso write: “To the Indian, land was a free good, to be used but not owned. But for the English, owning their very own land was the goal that drew many, perhaps most, across the ocean. Most of the British immigrants were the poor, the dispossessed, and the younger sons of nobility who had no rights in land back home. They had dreamed of finding cheap real estate subject to complete private ownership, and that was what they came after.” In Massachusetts, the Wampanoag population had decreased from 12,000 in 1600 to only 1,000 by 1675. The declining population was the result of European diseases, murder/war by the English colonists, slavery (Wampanoags being taken as slaves to be sold in the Caribbean slave markets), and the loss of their farmlands, hunting lands, and fishing areas to the English colonists. The Wampanoags did not always respond passively to English aggression. In 1675, two Plymouth settlers killed an Indian they found in an abandoned house. In retaliation, Wampanoag warriors killed the two settlers and seven others. In Rhode Island, English troops from Massachusetts and Connecticut attacked and burned the village of Niantic leader Queen Quaiapen. They destroyed 150 wigwams, killed seven Indians, and captured nine others. Niantic leader Quaiapen was also known as Magnus, Matantuck, and Sunke Squaw. She was the sister of Ninigret and the widow of Makanno. She was described as one of the most influential sachems among the Narragansetts (the Niantic were one of the Narragansett tribes).   Spanish By 1675, the Spanish colonization efforts focused primarily on Florida and what later became the Southeastern United States, the Southwest (which would become Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona), and California. In Florida, in response to the declining Apalachee population, the Spanish moved a number of Indians from other tribes—Chacato, Tama, Chine, Tocobaga, Amacano—into the Apalachee region. In Texas, Spanish explorers, including a group of Franciscan missionaries, traveled northward from Eagle Pass to present-day Edwards County. They encountered three tribes (we don’t know today which tribes) and noted that smallpox had already decimated tribal numbers. Some of the tribes were hunting buffalo and making jerky. Oneota In Iowa, the Oneota established a settlement along the banks of the Big Sioux River. As many as 10,000 people would eventually live at this site. Apache In Kansas and Nebraska, Apaches began living in permanent villages. They were raising corn and making pottery. The addition of farming to the economy was not caused by a scarcity of food. According to archaeologist James Gunnerson, in his chapter in Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 13, Part 1: Plains: “Rather, it was a dietary matter—a desire to assure a supply of the corn they had learned to like as supremely successful bison hunters who had been trading their surplus to the village dwellers for garden produce.” James Gunnerson goes on to say: “The spur to Apachean horticulture was probably the disruption of this trade brought about when the Apacheans began taking slaves from the Caddoans to sell in the Spanish Southwest.” More Seventeenth-Century American Indian histories Indians 101: American Indians and Christianity 350 years ago, 1675 Indians 101: American Indians and English colonists 350 years ago, 1675 Indians 101: American Indians in the Southeast 350 years ago, 1674 Indians 101: American Indians in New England 350 years ago, 1674 Indians 201: American Indians and New Sweden Indians 201: The Spanish search for the mythical American Indian cities of Cibola Indians 101: The French and American Indians in the 17th century Indians 101: The Dutch and American Indians in the 17th century

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Franciscans, History, Indians101, NativeAmericanNetroots, smallpox, ApacheIndians, WampanoagIndians, NianticIndians, QueenQuaiapen, ApalacheeIndians, ChacatoIndians, TamaIndians, ChineIndians, TocobagaIndians, AmacanoIndians, OneotaIndians] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: Some American Indian artifacts (museum exhibit)

 

at 4/10/25 8:15am

The Willapa Seaport Museum in Raymond, Washington has a display case filled with unlabeled Indian artifacts from tribes who traded with the peoples of the Northwest Coast. These baskets are decorated with porcupine quills. Note: These photographs were taken on October 11, 2024. More American Indian museum exhibits Indians 101: Clubs and a buffalo skull (museum exhibitions) Indians 101: Some Northwest Coast Indian artifacts (museum exhibit) Indians 101: A collection of Northwest Coast and Alaska artifacts (museum exhibit) Indians 101: Some Columbia Gorge Indian artifacts (museum exhibit 1) Indians 101: Some Plateau Indian artifacts (museum exhibit) Indians 101: California Indian Baskets in the Maryhill Museum (Photo Diary) Indians 101: Southwestern Baskets in the Maryhill Museum (Photo Diary) Indians 101: Zuni Fetishes (Photo Diary)

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Indians101, Museums, NativeAmericanNetroots, Photography, Washington, WillapaSeaportMuseum] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 100 years ago, 1925

 

at 4/8/25 8:15am

Briefly described below are a few of the Canadian First Nations events of a hundred years ago, 1925. Gathering at Fort Macleod The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was formed in 1873 to administer law and order in the Northwest Territories (present day Alberta and Saskatchewan). The North-West Mounted Police built Fort Macleod in southern Alberta in 1875 to offset American incursions in the whiskey and fur trade. Shown above is a model of the original fort exhibited in The Fort—Museum of the North West Mounted Police in Fort Macleod, Alberta. In 1925, some 3,000 Indians gathered in Fort Macleod for a powwow, rodeo and political meeting organized by Mike Mountain Horse. An encampment of 196 tipis was set up under the direction of Joseph Mountain Horse. The rodeo events were managed by Tom Three Persons. Representatives from the Pikuni, Kainai, Siksika, Cree, Sarcee, and Kootenai First Nations attended the political meeting. Also present was Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (Lumbee pretending to be Blackfoot). No federal officials attended the political meeting. The principal speaker was Weasel Calf, a Blackfoot leader who had signed the 1877 treaty. He said: “We as Indians have kept our part of the treaty, but the Government at times have failed to keep theirs.” In an article in Alberta History, Yale Belanger reports: “The problems brought out at the conference were considered serious, but with no federal officials present, they fell on deaf ears.” Buffalo  The buffalo or bison is the largest land mammal in North America and was the most important animal for the Plains Indians. Anthropologist Raymond J. DeMallie, in his introduction to the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 13, Part 1: Plains, writes: “All definitions of Plains culture begin with the dependence on the buffalo for subsistence and the integration of the buffalo into all aspects of life: the hides for making clothing, shelter, and containers; the bones and horns for tools; hair for ropes; dried dung for fuel; and the spirit of the animal as an important part of religious life.” In their chapter in Archaeology on the Edge: New Perspectives from the Northern Plains, J. Rod Vickers and Trevor Peck put it this way: “There can be no doubt that the bison was the primary, life-sustaining, resource of the Plains Indian and a seasonal round that did not successfully ensure access to the herds was not possible on the Northwestern Plains.” In North America there are two species of bison: the Plains Bison and the Wood Bison. In their chapter in Buffalo, C. Gates, T. Chowns, and H. Reynolds report: “The historic range of the wood bison was reported to have been centered in the north central section of the Interior Plains Physiographic Region of Canada. This region includes northern Alberta, southwestern Northwest Territories (NWT), northeastern British Columbia, and northwestern Saskatchewan.” The only remaining Wood Bison are found in Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta, Canada. By 1925, Plains Bison were beginning to be transferred from the Wainwright herd to Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta, which had been established in 1909 with Plains Bison from the Pablo herd on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. Over the next three years, 6,673 Plains Bison were transferred and released into the range occupied by Wood Bison. The transferred animals brought with them both bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis. In addition, there was some interbreeding between the two species. Totem Poles Totem poles are the iconic symbol of the Northwest Coast First Nations. Museum curator Audrey Hawthorn, in her book Kwakiutl Art, writes: “It is an art form unique to the region, characterized by its tall, columnar form bearing images of humans, birds, and other animals of the sea and forest.”  She also says: “The totem pole is a precise art form embodying a statement of beliefs about important social realities—descent, inheritance, power, privilege, and social worth—of the people who inhabited the Northwest Coast before the advent of European explorers and settlers.” Totem poles are a visual record of one’s ancestors which show the social position and antiquity of the family. Museum curator Audrey Hawthorn writes: “It is not possible for an outsider who is ignorant of the ceremonial context to ‘read’ the pole as if it were a glyphic or pictographic presentation of myth or history.” Noting that the totem poles are erected in commemoration of certain events, Christian Feest, in his book Native Arts of North America, explains: “Thus, they were not themselves narrative in character but symbolic of rights validated by narratives.” The homeland of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) First Nation is centered on Vancouver Island and the name Kwakwka’wakw probably means “beach at the north side of the river”, referring to the Nimkish River in northern Vancouver Island. In British Columbia, two Kwakwaka’wakw totem poles were relocated to Vancouver’s Victoria Park by the Vancouver Art, Historical and Scientific Association. Art professor Ronald Hawker, in an article in American Indian Art, writes: “This relocation seemed to reinforce a growing sense of the displacement of Native culture.” More Canadian histories Indians 101: The North-West Mounted Police Indians 101: Canadian Indians 250 years ago, 1774 Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 200 years ago, 1824 Indians 101: The Canadian fur trade 200 years ago, 1821 Indians 301: Canadian First Nations and Jacques Cartier, 1534-1542 Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 150 years ago, 1873 Indians 101: Outlawing the potlatch in Canada Indians 101: The Northwest Coast Potlatch 100 years ago, 1921

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Canada, History, Indians101, NativeAmericanNetroots, BlackfootIndians, KootenaiIndians, FlatheadReservation, North-WestMountedPolice, CreeIndians, totempoles, KwakwakawakwIndians, PikuniIndians, SiksikaIndians, SarceeIndians, KainaiIndians, LumbeeIndians, WoodBuffaloNationalPark] [Link to media]

— Ancient America 201: A very brief overview of the Hopewell moundbuilders

 

at 4/5/25 8:15am

In the eighteenth century, the European invaders began to spread westward from their coastal colonies and across the Appalachia Mountains.  Here they found monumental earthworks and ancient burial mounds. Following the pattern that they had established since their initial invasion of New England, the Europeans looted the graves, taking from them the finely made grave goods which they found. While the Europeans found the grave goods to be both exotic and aesthetically pleasing, the existence of thousands of well-engineered earthworks clashed with their stereotypical view of American Indians. Although the early Europeans in North America survived because of American Indian agricultural surpluses and the adoption of some Native American crops, they insisted that American Indians were wild, savage, hunting and gathering people with no real ownership of the land. While it seems obvious to us today that Indians would have built these great works, this would have implied a level of Indian civilization which many Euro-Americans could not accept. In an article in American Archaeology, Kenneth Feder puts it this way: “…many Americans of European descent refused to believe that America’s aboriginal inhabitants possessed such capabilities. Consequently, it was thought that some other group was responsible.” In his 1930 book The Mound-Builders,Henry Clyde Shetrone writes of some of the theories proposed: “From the ancient Chinese, Phoenicians, and Egyptians at one end to the Welsh and the Irish at the other is but a suggestion of the range of supposed sources of origin. The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel seem to have been an alluring subject of consideration for those who saw an opportunity of clearing up two major mysteries in the simplest possible manner.” In his entry on the mound builders in The Encyclopedia of North American Indians, James Brown writes: “Most travelers, missionaries, and settlers were quick to conclude that these constructions were the legacy of a race of people unrelated to the region’s current Native American inhabitants. They were confirmed in their ideas by the then prevalent white attitude that Native Americans were too indifferent to labor to have been capable of devoting the effort required in the mounds’ construction and would not have had the engineering knowledge to plan and execute the most demanding examples.” The first major study of the mound building traditions was done in 1848 by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis. It was published by the Smithsonian Institution and indicated a Mexican connection with the mound builders. Shown above is the survey map of the Hopewell enclosure in Carillon Park (Dayton, Ohio) drawn by Squier and Davis. Shown above is the survey map for the Hopewell enclosure in Greene County, Ohio. From 1881 to 1893, Cyrus Thomas led a study of the mounds for the newly created Bureau of Ethnology. This study found cultural continuity between the mound building traditions and indigenous tribal practices. James Brown reports: “The theory of a distinct race of Mound Builders was declared without substance from both an archaeological and an ethnohistorical standpoint.” In general, today’s archaeologists describe four major mound building traditions in North America: (1) Poverty Point which dates from 1500 BCE to 700 BCE; (2) Adena which dates from 500 BCE to 100 BCE; (3) Hopewell which dates from about 200 BCE (300 BCE in some sources) to about 400 CE (300 CE in some sources); and (4) Mississippian which dates from 700 CE to 1731 CE. Near Chillicothe, Ohio, the Hopewell site attracted the attention of early archaeologists and gave its name to a much broader cultural tradition. At the Hopewell site, there were thirty-eight earthen mounds within a rectangular earthen enclosure which enclosed 110 acres. In her book America Before the European Invasions, Alice Beck Kehoe writes: “Overall, Hopewell is the earliest civilization to impress Euroamerican archaeologists with displays of wealth objects reminiscent of European concepts of wealth and status displays.” Around the world, archaeologists have found monumental architecture—massive structures which required thousands of hours of communal labor to construct—in association with urban civilizations. Hopewell, on the other hand, is an example of a civilization without cities. The Hopewellians lived in small, dispersed villages. In his book The First North Americans: An Archaeological Journey, Brian Fagan writes: “Hopewell is a ‘great tradition’ or an ideology in the spiritual sense, a set of understandings, as it were, shared by numerous small regional societies over much of the Midwest, accompanied by distinctive artifacts and mortuary rituals.” Shown above is a map of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere displays in the Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, Ohio. According to the display: “Evidence of Hopewell culture can be found across a large swath of the country, from Illinois to west of the Appalachians Mountains and from southern Ontario to Florida, with the fullest expression found in southern Ohio in the valleys of the Great and Little Miami, Scioto and Muskingum Rivers.” In their chapter in Archaeology and Ancient Religion in the American Midcontinent, Brad Koldehoff and Kenneth Farnsworth describe Hopewell this way: “Hopewell is a cultural florescence that spread across much of the Eastern Woodlands and is represented in the archaeological record by remnants of shared ritual practices, objects, raw materials, and motifs. These shared practices and materials indicate Hopewellian participants were likely members of a widespread cult or religious movement in addition to participants in an interaction network.” Briefly described below are some of the features of the Hopewell Moundbuilding Culture. The Earthworks One of the outstanding characteristics of the Hopewell culture is the earthen mounds. Typical Hopewell mounds are 12 meters high and about 30 meters across at the base. Earthworks (berms of earth), which sometimes exceed 500 meters in diameter, were constructed in circular, square, rectangular, and octagonal shapes. Anthropologist Peter Nabokov, in his book Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places, reports: “Most spectacular of the ten thousand mounds produced by Hopewell people are sites that pair circles and squares, a configuration which is repeated in some dozens of locations.” In his entry on Hopewell in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, William Dancey reports: “Ceremonial centers commonly combined earthworks in geometric shapes such as circles, squares, semicircles, arcs, and parallel walls. The orientation of some of these figures has suggested that Hopewellians recognized the cycles of the moon, sun, and Venus.” The Hopewell earthworks, particularly the circles and squares, appear to be oriented toward some fairly precise lunar observations and suggest that the Hopewell people were accomplished astronomers. In at least one instance, the orientation of the earthworks corresponds with the 18.6-year lunar cycle and suggests that the Hopewell astronomers made and recorded observations over fairly long periods of time. The size and complexity of the mounds provide insights into Hopewell planning, engineering skills, and social organization. The mounds and other archeological evidence show that Hopewell people had a highly developed social organization that included class structure and a division of labor, with specialists like metal workers, artists, and traders. In addition, they had leaders of hereditary rank and privileges, a strong religious system, and control over cooperative labor. The Hopewell mounds appear to have been ceremonial centers, places where people were buried. In addition to mortuary ceremonies, they were probably also used for other ceremonies.  These ceremonies provided an opportunity for the people living in scattered villages to come together. The Great Hopewell Road, which runs for about 60 miles roughly parallel to the Scioto River, links a number of prominent mound sites. Archaeologists have also found “alleys” or “avenues” created by earthen walls which may have marked processional routes from outlying communities into the ceremonial centers. Hopewell Social Organization The mounds and other features show that the Hopewellians had a highly developed social organization. This probably included a class structure and a division of labor, with specialists like metal workers, artists, and traders; leaders of hereditary rank and privileges; a strong religious system; and direction over cooperative labor. William Dancey summarizes Hopewell social structure this way: “Some archaeologists argue that Hopewell must have had a chiefdom type of society in which a single lineage dominated the social order, aggregating and redistributing resources through negotiation. Others have envisioned a more egalitarian system in which leaders emerged through achievement, as among modern tribal societies, and the structure was not institutionalized.” In his book An Introduction to Native North America, Mark Sutton writes: “Hopewell social and political systems were very complex with a class structure and at least a tribal level political organization, perhaps even a chiefdom level. It appears that ‘commoners’ were cremated, while the elite were buried in graves with lavish offerings.” Hopewell Art In addition to earthen mounds, one of the major characteristics of Hopewell was the flowering of artistic creation. William Dancey reports: “Hopewell people chipped ceremonial daggers from obsidian acquired in the Rockies and cold-hammer copper from Lake Superior sources to make bracelets, broaches, necklaces, headdresses, and ornamental cutouts. Mica from southern Appalachia was cut into various forms and attached to clothing (skin and woven cloth). Buscyon shells from the Gulf coast were used as containers. Pipestone from local sources was carved to form effigy platform pipes, the bowls of which often depicted the region’s common birds and mammals.” The Hopewell people not only made many useful items, but they made artifacts that were beautiful. They decorated their pottery with both dentate-stamping and rocker-stamping. Their pottery often had cross-hatched rim decorations and zoned decorations. Regarding Hopewell pottery, Christian Feest, in his book Native Arts of North America, writes: “Stylized bird motifs are outlined by deep, incised lines, and the background is textured with a toothed rocker or roulette.” While it is common to characterize Indian people prior to the arrival of the Europeans as “stone age” people, the Hopewell artists made many different artifacts from copper. Their copper artifacts included musical instruments such as panpipes; cutting tools such as copper celts; copper needles; and beads made from both copper and from meteoric iron. In addition to working with copper, the Hopewell artists also made some objects from gold and silver. In addition to pots, the Hopewell people also made pottery figurines, usually depicting humans. All of the Hopewell figurines have strong realistic tendencies. The figures include both seated and standing males and females. Smoking Pipes Using pipes for smoking tobacco, particularly in ceremonial or religious contexts, seems to have been a universal trait among the native peoples of North American. The oldest form of smoking pipes were tubular in shape and first appear  in the Eastern Woodlands about 1500 BCE. The tube pipes transformed into platform pipes which became one of the hallmarks of Hopewell. Hopewell platform pipes were sometimes carved with animal and bird effigies. In his chapter on Hopewell in North American Archaeology, William Dancey writes: “The birds and mammals carved on some Hopewellian platform pipes are nearly exact replicas of their subjects, complete with a sense of movement. Conversely, some Hopewell art shows animals and animal parts, including human, in silhouette fashion in copper and mica cutouts.” Shown above is a Hopewell pipe displayed in the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio. Brad Koldehoff and Kenneth Farnsworth write: “We propose that while tube pipes were simple shamanistic devices, platform pipes were powerful symbols of a new religious/political movement known today as Hopewell.” Brad Koldehoff and Kenneth Farnsworth also write: “…we suspect that platform pipes were more than shamanistic devices; they were powerful objects that shaped human events.” Personal Decoration and Art For personal decoration, the Hopewell people made pottery rings, ear spools from both copper and stone, and copper headpieces. They often used antlers to indicate chiefly or leadership status. Shown above is a gorget—an ornamental plaque which is hung by a string or cord around the neck like a pendant. This was displayed in the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio. Another interesting Hopewell artifact is the Hopewell Hand: a hand which was carved from mica and buried in a mound in Ohio.   Shown above is the Hopewell Hand. Trade  Like other Indian cultures, the Hopewell were not isolated from the rest of North America. The Hopewell trading network spread west to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, north to Ontario, Canada, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. Trade goods included copper from the Lake Superior area, mica from the southern Appalachians, obsidian and grizzly bear teeth from Wyoming and Montana, and marine shells from both the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. It is clear from the distribution of these goods that some network, either social or religious, must have existed for this exchange to take place. As evidence of this wide trading network, Hopewell graves contain such items as conch shells from the Gulf Coast, shark teeth from the ocean, and pipes with alligator effigies.   Shown above is an obsidian projectile point. The obsidian was obtained in trade and originated in what is now Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Subsistence The Hopewell farmers raised a number of indigenous crops, such as sunflowers, marsh elder, squash, little barley, erect knotweed, maygrass,  and stumpweed. In farming, they used hoes made from stone and from the shoulder blades of bison and deer. In his book Native American Archaeology in the Parks, Kenneth Feder writes: “The Hopewell supplemented their reliance on wild plant and animal resources with agriculture, but not the stereotypical crops of corn, beans, and squash.” The Hopewell people got much of their food from gathering wild plants, including hickory nuts, acorns, walnuts, grapes, and wild plums. They hunted deer, turkeys, and other small game.  For fishing, they made fishhooks from both copper and bone. Hopewell villages tended to be in areas which were good for growing native crops. Usually, their settlements were dispersed along stream and river valley corridors. Their villages generally did not appear to have any overall community plan. In his book Prehistory of the Americas, Stuart Fiedel writes: “…the largest villages cold not have held more than a few hundred people. They were generally located at the foot of a bluff, near the river and about 20 km (12½ miles) away from the next large village.” Decline The Hopewellian centers began to decline about 300 CE and by 550 CE they disappeared completely. In his chapter on the Hopewell phenomenon in The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology, Douglas Charles writes: “…the end of Hopewell was not a collapse, but rather a diminishing and disappearance of ritual and exchange practices as the floodplain environments and demographic influx stabilized, again varying regionally.” On the other hand, in his book The First North Americans: An Archaeological Journey, Brian Fagan sees the decline as fairly rapid—325 to 350 CE—and describes it this way: “Charnel-house building slowed, earthen enclosures were no longer constructed. Ceremonial activity declined dramatically. An explanation for this sudden change eludes us.” Several reasons for the Hopewell decline have been suggested by archaeologists. Mark Sutton writes: “A number of hypotheses propose to explain this decline, including overpopulation, climate change, an increase in warfare, and/or an increase in hunting efficiency (and thus the decimation of game) due to the introduction of the bow and arrow.” One potential reason is, of course, climate change as the Hopewell decline corresponds to a period in which the weather became too cold and moist for tropical flint corn. This three-century cooling period would have impacted other foods as well. In her book North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account, Alice Beck Kehoe writes: “Cultivated grain harvests would have been subject to destructive frosts much more often in this cooler period than during the Hopewell climax, and many supplementary foods, such as hickory nuts, would also have become less plentiful.” Some scholars, however, disagree with this suggestion. In her book Native Americans Before 1492: The Moundbuilding Centers of the Eastern Woodlands, Lynda Shaffer writes: “The peoples of this epoch were not dependent upon corn for their food supply.” Brian Fagan writes: “Climatic cooling did not play a significant role in triggering change.” The Hopewell decline may have been brought about by a decline in the exchange of northern copper for southern coastal shells. At the end of the Hopewellian era, the Indian peoples in the Southeast began to exploit local copper deposits. Once the Southeastern people developed their own copperworking traditions, the need to exchange shells for northern copper objects disappeared. Once the exchange was gone, there was no reason to continue the ceremonies associated with the culture. Lynda Shaffer writes: “This southern shift from northern to local sources of copper certainly is significant, but it is difficult to say whether it caused the collapse of the Hopewellian network or was a result of its collapse.” The Hopewellian decline may have been brought about by warfare which accompanied the introduction of the bow and arrow. By the end of the Hopewell period, their sites tended to be located on hilltops where they could be easily defended. At some of these sites, there are indications of fires and massacres. Lynda Shaffer reports: “The introduction of the bow and arrow could have temporarily altered the balance of power and contributed to an increase in the frequency and intensity of warfare.” Hopewell Influence Hopewell influence stretched from Minnesota in the north to Mississippi in the south, from Nebraska in the west to Virginia in the east. This does not mean that Hopewell was an empire, or even a political confederation of tribes. Rather, Hopewell as probably one of the first Pan-Indian religious movements whose artistic style and ideas influenced many other cultures stretching from Mississippi to Minnesota, from Nebraska to Virginia. In his book Prehistory of the Americas, Stuart Fiedel describes the geographic spread of Hopewell influence this way: “From southern Illinois, Hopewell culture traits appear to have spread, by diffusion and/or migration, northward into Wisconsin (Trempealeau culture) and Michigan (Goodall culture); westward into Missouri (Kansas City and Cooper cultures), and southward, through western Tennessee (Copena culture), to Louisiana (Marksville), Mississippi (Miller), Alabama (Porter), and Florida (Santa Rose and Swift Creek cultures).” Stuart Fiedel also writes: “The spread of Hopewell artifacts may denote acceptance of an ideology that stressed elaborate funerary rites.” In his chapter on Hopewell in North American Archaeology, William Dancey asks: “Does Hopewell art represent art for art’s sake, or is it a material manifestation of a worldview or cosmology?” In her book North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account, Alice Beck Kehoe writes: “Above all, Hopewell was the integration of thousands of villages throughout the East into a system in which material goods were moved in the service of political leaders marked by well-defined status symbols.” In looking at the influence of Hopewell on other cultures, it seems logical to also explore possible influences from other cultures on Hopewell. One logical candidate is Mexico as influences from cultures such as the Maya are found in other parts of North America, including the Southeast. Alice Beck Kehoe writes: “Though some occasional contacts between Hopewell and Mexico must have occurred, Hopewell has strong indigenous roots in the Late Archaic of the central Midwest.” While there are no clear connections between Hopewell and contemporary Indian tribes, many of the cultural traditions of the Iroquois tribes seem to be linked to Hopewell. The Iroquois, like the Hopewell, used antlers as the metaphor for chiefly office. Similarly, both groups use a weeping-eye motif in their art. More Ancient America Ancient America: Hopewell Offerings #1 (museum tour) Ancient America: Hopewell Offerings #2 (museum tour) Ancient America: Linking people to the cosmos in ancient Ohio Ancient America: Ohio Ceremonial Earthworks (museum tour) Ancient America: A very brief overview of Adena burials (500 BCE - 100 BCE) Ancient America: A very short overview of the Fort Ancient tradition Ancient America: Fort Ancient offerings (museum tour) Ancient America: The Old Copper People

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, Archaeology, AncientAmerica, Hopewell, AncientAmerica201, NativeAmericanNet] [Link to media]

— Tulalip Indian longhouse

 

at 4/3/25 2:08pm

Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly hidden at the intersection of religion, art, science, food, and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. The people of the Tulalip tribes would traditionally spend the winter in their longhouses situated in permanent villages. During the winter months, a great deal of teaching would take place around the longhouse fires. During this time, the elders would pass on the family stories, songs, lineages, and moral teachings. According to the exhibit in the Hibulb Culture Center: “Our songs, dances, stories, basket designs and carvings are owned by certain families and are used only with their permission. Ownership of this knowledge may be given by families to particular family members, other selected people, or the whole tribe. We have a strict process of granting rights and permission to use this type of knowledge.” Shown above is the entrance to the longhouse in the Hibulb Culture Center. The television screen provides visitors with the stories of the Tulalip peoples. he poles shown above were carved about 1914 by William Shelton. As a young boy in the 1870s, he had been to the great potlatch house at Skagit Bay Head. In 1912, he advocated for a longhouse to be built on the Tulalip Bay. These posts were carved for this longhouse according to his childhood memories of the posts at the great potlatch house. Shown above is the outside of the longhouse showing the shed roof configuration.  Coast Salish houses were often built in a shed style with the roof pitched because of the great width of the structure. Open thread This is an open thread—all topics are welcome.

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, CoffeeHour, Community, Museums, OpenThread, Photography, Washington, HibulbCultureCenter, StreetProphets, TulalipIndians] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: Educating American Indian children in 1890

 

at 4/3/25 8:15am

In 1890, there were two kinds of schools for American Indian children: boarding schools and day schools. These schools were run by the federal government or by Christian missionary groups (often funded, at least in part, by the federal government). School attendance was mandatory, and the army was sometimes called in to force the children to attend school. Non-Indian Americans generally supported the Indian school as one solution to the “Indian problem.” Historian Clyde Ellis, in an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, writes: “Reformers and policymakers believed the school could mold Indian youths into a new race, one in which the values of thrift, discipline, individuality, and Christianity would more, closely reflect those of white society.” In the boarding schools, Indian children were required to wear European-style clothes (often military-style uniforms), speak only English (speaking a Native language often resulted in physical punishment), attend Christian church services, and sleep in beds. Boys had their long hair cut short. While education in the boarding schools focused on vocational training, it also sought to provide them with the basics of English reading and writing and to convert them to Christianity. The curriculum usually called for the children to spend a half-day in the classroom and then work for a half-day. Since the federal government, and perhaps the American people, didn’t want to spend very much money for Indian education, the boarding schools were expected to be relatively self-sufficient. The students, often under the guise of “industrial education”, served as an unpaid labor pool to provide cleaning, cooking, sewing, farming, dairying, and other services.  In her Dartmouth College M.A. Thesis Chemawa Indian Boarding School: The First One Hundred Years, 1880-1980, Sonciray Bonnell reports: “Unpaid labor was justified by the claim that hard work shaped character and gave students pride; wages only encouraged students to expect such wages for all their work.” Cary Collins, in the introduction to Assimilation’s Agent: My Life as a Superintendent in the Indian Boarding School System, writes: “Many social reformers believed these schools, buttressed with their superior machinery for remaking Indian people in the dominant American image, held the promise of a viable means of assimilation and an effective formula for solving America’s venerable Indian problem.” In her University of Montana M.A. Thesis The Ottowa Experience: The Life of Iassac Battice in the Context of his Tribe, Betty Paulsen reports: “Harsh discipline and corporal punishment, study and Christian training were the ethic of the boarding schools.” Sonciray Bonnell puts it this way: “The founders of Indian boarding schools were committed to casting their students into something they were not, nor necessarily wanted to be: Euroamerican Christians.” In his chapter in Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust, Hopi historian Matthew Gilbert writes: “Although off-reservation boarding schools largely existed to train Indian students in industrial trades, school officials forced Indian pupils to attend Christian gatherings, pray Christian prayers, and adopt, at least for a time, a cultural worldview based on Christianity.” Briefly described below are some of the events involving Indian education in 1890. Cheyenne and Arapaho In Oklahoma, rations were withheld from Cheyenne and Arapaho parents who refused to place their children in school. Kiowa In Oklahoma, a Protestant mission school was established among the Kiowas. According to the missionary there is a-- “...need for strictly religious schools, with no political affiliation, where unhindered the Bible could be taught and its truths emphasized.” The school was sponsored by the Women’s Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.   Hopi In Arizona, conservatives in the Hopi village of Oraibi refused to send their children to school. The Tenth Cavalry was sent in to maintain peace. The military troops invaded the village and “captured” 104 children for the school. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs arranged for Oraibi leader Loololma (also spelled Lololoma) and other Hopi leaders to visit Washington where they were encouraged to accept allotments, Christian missionaries, and American schools. Loololoma returned to the Hopi supporting these programs. In his chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 9: Southwest, Frederick Dockstader reports: “Lololoma was apparently deeply impressed by what he saw in the capital. Crediting these wonders to the White educational system, he changed his attitude completely and began to use his influence to persuade his people to send their children to school; thus began the disintegration of Oraibi.” Indian Affairs representatives met with the military at the boarding school at Keam’s Canyon, Arizona to discuss a quota system to force Hopi children to attend the school. The Army was to implement and enforce the program. In the Hopi village of Oraibi, Loololma supported the government program and was imprisoned in a kiva by those who opposed it. Federal troops came into the village and released Loololma. Paiute, Shoshone, Washo In Nevada, the Stewart Institute was opened as an Indian boarding school. The school started with 67 Paiute, Shoshone, and Washo students While the school opened its doors as the Stewart Institute, named after Senator William Stewart who was responsible for obtaining the federal appropriation to start the school, the name was soon changed to the Carson Indian School and in 1894 it was changed to the Stewart Indian School. Shoshone and Bannock In Idaho, the Indian agent for the Fort Hall reservation managed to enroll 100 Shoshone and Bannock children in the agency boarding school. With the use of Indian police and a policy of withholding rations from reluctant parents, nearly half of all of the school-aged children on the reservation were enrolled in the school. When enrollment at the school dropped, a council was held with the Shoshone and Bannock and they were informed that the school was to be kept filled or the soldiers would come. Scarlet fever broke out in the boarding school on the Fort Hall Reservation. Soon nearly all of the Shoshone and Bannock children had the disease. Thirty-eight children died from the disease. Blackfoot In Montana, the Jesuits opened the Holy Family mission on land given to them by Blackfoot chief White Calf. In his book Mission Among the Blackfeet, Howard Harrod describes the setting: “Built on the banks of the Two Medicine River in a narrow valley at the edge of a cottonwood grove, the mission buildings were surrounded on the north and west by stark cliffs over which the Blackfeet had driven buffalo in earlier times.” With regard to the function of the mission, Howard Harrod reports: “Holy Family Mission was designed to displace and replace the functions performed by the traditional home. The children were taken from their families and lived at the mission most of the year, except for a brief vacation.” The mission school took over the parents’ role in teaching their children. Puyallup Reservation In Washington, a reporter from the Tacoma Daily Ledger visited the boarding school on the Puyallup Reservation. He wrote: “The reporter was surprised to find a class at the board drawing. He had not supposed that Indians possessed artistic ability.” He went on to report: “A large number of drawings of various kinds were shown, all the fruit off the natural genius of the Indians, directed only by such training as the teachers could give them.” More American Indian histories Indians 101: American Indian education policies in 1890 Indians 201: The Hopi Indians and Mormon missionaries Indians 101: The Hopi Reservation in the 19th century Indians 101: Faith-Based Reservations Indians 201: The Pueblos and the United States, 1846 to 1876 Indians 101: Heathens on the Nez Perce Reservation Indians 201: Indians as People Under the Law Indians 101: Federal Policies in 1890

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, boardingschools, Education, History, Indians101, Jesuits, NativeAmericanNetroots, BannockIndians, BlackfootIndians, PaiuteIndians, ShoshoneIndians, HopiIndians, CheyenneIndians, MethodistEpiscopalChurch, KiowaIndians, ArapahoIndians, WashoIndians, FortHallReservation, CommissionerofIndianAffairs, Loololma, StewartInstitute, PuyallupReservation] [Link to media]

— Indians 101: American Indian education policies in 1890

 

at 4/1/25 8:15am

In 1890, Indian affairs in the United States were administered i- the Interior Department by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, a political appointee. At this time, one of the goals of the federal government was to “civilize” American Indians by having them assimilate into mainstream American society. One important “civilizing” force in assimilation was education. The purpose of education was to strip all vestiges of Indian culture from the Indian students: they were to speak only English; they were to dress in the American style, they were to eat American foods, they were to worship the Christian gods, they were to live in American-style houses. With regard to the emphasis on Christianity in the government-run Indian boarding schools, Hopi historian Matthew Gilbert, in his chapter in Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust, writes: “The necessity to include Christianity in the overall objective for Indian education largely stemmed from the government’s desire to create Indian students who would reflect a Protestant America.” Destroying Indian cultures, particularly Indian religions, was seen as a critical step in assimilating Indians into mainstream American culture. Matthew Gilbert reports: “The government intended for students to learn about Jesus Christ, Christian doctrine, and the Bible.” Law researcher Steven Newcomb, in an article in Indian Country Today, writes: “One of the things U.S. boarding schools beat into American Indian children was patriotism toward the American flag and devotion to the Bible, in part by working to make Indian children ashamed of their own Native spirituality.” In 1890, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs announced that the 8th of February was to be celebrated as Franchise Day. It was on this day that the Dawes Act was signed into law, and the Commissioner felt that this: “…is worthy of being observed in all Indian schools as the possible turning point in Indian history, the point at which the Indians may strike out from tribal and reservation life and enter American citizenship and nationality” The purpose of the Dawes Act was to break up communally owned reservation lands, assign allotments to individual tribal members, and declare “surplus” lands open for non-Indian settlement. Also in 1890, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs published a detailed set of rules for Indian schools which stipulated a uniform course of study and the textbooks which were to be used in the schools. The Commissioner prescribed the celebration of United States national holidays as a way of replacing Indian heroes and assimilating Indians. According to the Commissioner: “Education should seek the disintegration of the tribes, and not their segregation. They should be educated, not as Indians, but as Americans.” Schools were to give Indian students surnames so that as they became property owners it would be easier to fix lines of inheritance. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs ordered Indian names on the reservations to be changed so that each Indian was given an English Christian name and surname. Surnames were to be translated to English and shortened if they are too long. The new names were to be explained to the Indians. Historian Virginia Cole Trenholm, in her book The Arapahoes, Our People, writes: “One wonders what reasons the agent could give for changing such colorful names as Lone Bear to Lon Brown, Night Horse to Henry Lee Tyler, or Yellow Calf to George Caldwell.” On some reservations, Indians were given names such as “Cornelius Vanderbilt” and “William Shakespeare.” In commenting on the practice of giving Indians names from Euroamerican history and literature, Frank Terry, in his 1897 article in American Monthly Review of Reviews.  reports: “The plan resorted to in some quarters of discarding the Indian names altogether and fitting the Indians out with names that are purely English has not worked well, for those selected in many cases are names illustrious in American history, and this has caused the Indians to become the butt of many a vulgar joke.” On the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, the Indian agent reported that: “Now every family has a name. Every father, mother; every husband and wife and children bear the last names of these people; now property goes to his descendant.” The Indian agent also reported: “During my administration I took a census of over two thousand names and had them all change, though it took over two years to accomplish the task.” In noting that Indians often changed names in response to events in their lives, Frank Terry, the Superintendent of the Crow Boarding School, writes: “Hence it will be seen that the Indian names are nothing, a delusion, and a snare, and the practice of converting them into English appears eminently unwise.” Frank Terry also notes that the requirement to give Indians American-style names has not been uniformly carried out: “While some have made earnest efforts to carry out the wishes of the Department in this particular, others have treated the matter as one of little or no concern. In many cases no attempt seems ever to have been made to systematize the names of the Indians, and in many others where such attempt was made the correct names for want of attention on the part of officers in charge, have been forgotten or permitted to fall into disuse.” More American Indian histories Indians 201: Carlisle Indian School Indians 101: The Chemawa Indian School Indians 101: The Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School Indians 101: The Genoa Indian School Indians 101: From Boarding School to University Indians 101: The Smithsonian and the Indians in the 19th Century Indians 201: Renaming Indians Indians 101: Choctaw Education After Removal

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, boardingschools, Education, History, Indians101, NativeAmericanNetroots, DawesAct, WindRiverReservation, CrowBoardingSchool, CommissionerofIndianAffairs] [Link to media]

— Standing Rock Sioux & Greenpeace vs. big oil

 

at 3/29/25 5:02pm

This is the story about how Greenpeace paid the price for standing up for a Native American tribe against a oil pipeline firm called Energy Transfer and losing a SLAPP suit. Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. The point is to tie up money and resources of a defendant. It's something Donald Trump does all the time. In 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux set up a protest camp along the proposed route for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota. The were concerned about pollution to their water, calling themselves "water protectors." They also feared the pipeline would disturb sacred sites and that it violated treaty rights. During the next year, they were joined by activists and activist organizations around the country, and other Indigenous people, and even hundreds of Veterans. Greenpeace showed up, too. Six people. Over the year 100,000 took part. Hundreds of police were used to patrol the protest with periods of violent arrests, even of journalists. The Energy Transfer Dakota Access Pipeline went online is 2017. They picked Greenpeace as a target for having disrupted their construction work, causing additional costs. They filed a suit against Greenpeace for $300 million in a federal lawsuit which was dismissed in 2019. In that suit, Energy Transfer accused Greenpeace of racketeering conspiracy and terrorism. So, Energy Transfer changed it's legal efforts to the North Dakota state courts. They knew that North Dakota has no protection against SLAPP lawsuits. Every judge in the district where it was filed, recused themselves for conflict of interest. Of the 11 person jury, 7 had ties to the fossil fuels industry. Some of them admitted they could not be fair, but the judge empaneled them anyway. There were no Indigenous or people of color on the jury, even though Indigenous issues were central to the trial. In a pretrial survey, 97% of the people said they could not be fair to Greenpeace. Energy Transfer put on a television and online advertising campaign in the weeks before the trial making their case against Greenpeace. Printed copies of the Central ND News, with articles critical of the protest, were sent to every resident in the county. The judge wouldn't allow discovery for Greenpeace to find out who was behind this operation, which was designed to taint the jury pool. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe was the organizer of the protests, and yet Energy Transfer was able to convince a jury that's six Greenpeace members were behind the whole thing. During the legal battle during the years, the CEO of Energy Transfer, Kelly Warren, also a major Trump campaign donor, had many things to say about the lawsuit, like activists, "should be removed from the gene pool." He said the lawsuit was not only about the damages, but also to send a message to environmental protesters. Greenpeace claimed that: "In this case, Energy Transfer has maintained their entirely false claims that Greenpeace organized the #NoDapl resistance at Standing Rock, an allegation rooted in racism and in its erasure of Indigenous leadership in North Dakota." When the jury reached it's verdict over a week ago, the damages were a whopping $667 million. During the three week trial, The Guardian had an observer in court. Several things stood out as stacked against Greenpeace. There was no court recorder, and there are no court transcripts or recordings available. Live stream of the proceeding was not allowed even though requested by The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Key documents were sealed, so not available to the public. The judge did not allow an expert report that showed that the work on the pipeline had leaked roughly 1 million gallons of drilling fluids into the drinking water of millions of people. It was not a fair trial and there are so many grounds for appeal, even having the verdict set aside, that Greenpeace should win. This win for Energy Transfer does not bode well for environmental protesters during this second Trump administration. When the FBI can determine that an organization is supporting terrorism, then the Treasury Department can revoke their nonprofit status. Greenpeace is appealing here, and has a countersuit they filed in the Netherlands In February of 2024. In what is apparently the first test of the European Union's anti-SLAPP Directive, Greenpeace International is looking to recover damages and costs it has accrued due to Energy Transfers meritless lawsuits. Their suit will be heard in court in July. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has filed their own lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers last October, arguing that the DAPL is operating illegally and must be shut down. The Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over a section of the pipeline that passes under Lake Oahe, half a mile upstream from the Standing Rock reservation. Standing Rock Sioux celebration The suit contends that the Army Corps of Engineers ignored federal regulations by allowing the pipeline to operate without an easement and insufficient study of environmental impacts, an emergency plans for spills. "We are fighting for our rights and the water that is the life of the Oceti Sakowin tribes," said said Standing Rock Sioux Chairwoman Janet Alkire said during a news conference on Indigenous Peoples Day. The pathway of the pipeline crosses unceded tribal land recognized as belonging to the Sioux Nation under an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government. An engineering report from a firm called Exponent was conducted at the behest of Greenpeace in their continuing lawsuit against energy transfer. The report concluded that 1.4 million gallons of bentonite clay-based drilling mud was unaccounted for. There was no clear indication of what happened to it, but the assumption is that it seeped into the soil. Energy Transfer has requested that the report be thrown from the case due to it being unreliable. The tribe noted that the Environmental Protection Agency in 2022 recommended that Energy Transfer be banned from any federal contracts. Standing Rocks Sioux put forth that Energy Transfer is not entitled to an easement if it is barred from government contracts. The ban recommendation stems from action in Pennsylvania with two of Energy Transfer's pipelines, where a criminal case showed that they had used unapproved additives in the drilling fluid used in constructing one of the pipelines. For this reason, the Sioux Tribe wonders whether any toxins were used in the drilling underneath Lake Oahe. On March 28th, it was Judge James Boasberg that dismissed the Standing Rock Sioux case against the Army Corps of Engineers. He found that the tribe must wait until the Army Corps has finished an environmental study before bringing another case against the agency. "No matter it's frustration with Defendant's sluggish pace, it is not yet entitled to a second bite at the Apple," Boasberg ruled. The first case that the Sioux filed was in 2016. In 2020, Judge Boasberg ruled that the Army Corps had not conducted an environmental impact study, violating Federal law. The judge pulled the easement and ordered the pipeline drained of oil pending the Army Corps report. In 2021, an appellate court reversed his decision but did not reinstate the easement. Following that decision, Boasburg wrote that he couldn't shut down the pipeline indefinitely, as the tribe had not proved any immediate danger and irreparable harm. The Army Corps of Engineers published a draft version of its report in 2023. Once the report is finalized the Army Corps will use it to determine whether an easement should be granted again. Judge Boasberg was annoyed that the Army Corps hadn't acted on its own property rights. ​​"The Corps has conspicuously declined to adopt a conclusive position regarding the pipelines continued operation, despite continued prodding from this court and the court of appeals to do so," he wrote in 2021. In his Friday memo, the judge noted that many of the pieces of the current lawsuit were decided in the 2016 case, and the situations are not going to change until the Army Corps of Engineers report is completed. But, he noted that the tribe could file a new lawsuit against the Corps once the report is finished. The tribe last fall asserted that they had new evidence, which is probably the Greenpeace commissioned study, which Energy Transfer does not think is valid. After the judge's decision, North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong said in a statement, ​"The Dakota Access Pipeline has been operating safely for almost 8 years now and is a critical piece of infrastructure for North Dakota and our nations energy security."​ Judge Boasberg has been handling the Standing Rock Sioux cases since 2016. He's criticized the Army Corps of Engineers of dragging their feet, but there's nothing he can do about it. When they finalize the report, the Standing Rock Sioux have their chance to file another lawsuit to shutdown the Dakota Access Pipeline. All they can to is right now is to write letters to the Army Corps of Engineers to hurry it up. Greenpeace has two avenues to get rid of the Energy Transfer win. Since Energy Transfer made the mistake of including Greenpeace International in the lawsuit, Greenpeace International has every right to file their anti-SLAPP lawsuit in the Netherlands. A court ruling there can be used to help reverse the North Dakota ruling. In the meantime, Greenpeace can appeal on all the court bias mistakes from the judge, the jury, disallowed evidence, jury pool tampering and more. These cases are intertwined for many important issues. First Amendment rights. Tribal treaty rights. EPA and Army Corps of Engineer mistakes. Both Greenpeace and the Standing Rock Sioux need to win to literally stay alive. The Sioux for their water rights, and Greenpeace for beating a judgement that would bankrupt them. The Sioux would have rather have had Energy Transfer file against them for the protests, because they would have more easily won. That's why Energy Transfer went after Greenpeace. In oil country, they're looked at as interlopers, as seen by the pre-trial jury survey that said 97% couldn't give Greenpeace a fair trial. That should have caused a venue change, but it didn't. Greenpeace filed motions for a venue change and were overruled. Greenpeace will file their appeal soon. If they lose in the North Dakota appeals court, then it's the state Supreme Court. They could just leapfrog over that and take it to the U.S. Supreme Court because it really is a First Amendment case. Six Greenpeace members did not cause a year long protest and there was no "funding" of the protest as the right loves to accuse. I'd like them to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court. I don't think they can get a fair shake in North Dakota. Resources: Standing Rock Sioux Statement on Energy Transfer case against Greenpeace. Greenpeace March 19th Case Statement March 25th Op-ed in The Guardian about the Greenpeace case and its meaning to free speech Two page summary of Standing Rock Sioux October 2024 lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers (PDF) 34 page lawsuit of Standing Rock Sioux lawsuit against Army Corps of Engineers (PDF) English translation from Dutch of Greenpeace lawsuit against Energy Transfer for SLAPP lawsuit (PDF)(not so great) National Museum of American Indian page on why treaties matter with the DAPL 17 page 2023 letter by the Standing Rock Sioux to the Army Corps of Engineers (PDF)

[Author: Bill Addis] [Category: greenpeace, Netherlands, NorthDakota, Sioux, Boasberg, energytransfer, StandingRockSioux, lakeoahe, armycorpsengineers] [Link to media]

— The erasure of Indigenous peoples continues as federal websites scrub MMIP* report

 

at 3/29/25 8:23am

Yesterday I posted a diary about the elimination of flags representing Arizona’s 22 Indigenous nations at the VA medical center in Phoenix following trump’s boneheaded DEI order. According to news reports, the flags were “unceremoniously” dropped off at the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Scottsdale with no explanation. Several tribes worked with Gov. Katie Hobbs’s office, and today all 22 flags are on display at the Capitol in Phoenix. We’re grateful every day that it’s Katie Hobbs and not Kari Lake sitting in the governor’s office!  Given that Arizona is more than 40% Hispanic and has one of the country’s largest Native American populations, trump’s assaults on nonwhite individuals and groups is a nonstop freak show, but this recent attempt to erase Indigenous cultures is national in scope. The Not Invisible Act was signed by — wait for it — Donald Trump in 2020, when it was heralded as a landmark effort to combat the systematic violence perpetrated against Indigenous persons at rates higher than the general population, especially homicide, child abuse, rape, and human trafficking. Until a spotlight was shone on the tragedies by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) movement, too many crimes went uninvestigated let alone solved (here’s Arizona’s database). Trump took credit for signing the Act and bragged about being the first president to recognize MMIP. That was then. One important outcome of the Not Invisible Act is a 200-page report titled “Not One More,” which was available on federal websites until it wasn’t. You can still find general information about MMIP and the Not Invisible Act at the Department of Justice website, but if you click the link for the “Not One More” report, you’re greeted with “Page Not Found.” I guess reporting on crimes against American Indian populations, and making specific recommendations that the federal government should undertake in partnership with Native communities, is a bridge too far for that racist boob in the White House.  However, the wonderful folks at the Wayback Machine grabbed the report before it was disappeared. There you’ll find a comprehensive review spelling out the many problems specific to Tribal communities as well as for Indians living off the reservation, including: a lack of funding, training, and awareness; the roadblocks created by overlapping legal jurisdictions; the lack of historic and contemporary data; the need for tools and skilled professionals to conduct investigations, and so much more. The nearly 50 Commissioners, drawn from Tribal leadership, law enforcement, and federal agencies, make dozens and dozens of recommendations throughout the report, which begins: There is a crisis in Tribal communities. A crisis of violence, a crisis of abuse, and a crisis of abject neglect affecting Indian Women & Men, Indian Children, and Indian Elders. The federal government must act now; not tomorrow; not next week; not next month; and not next year. Once and for all, the federal government must end its systematic failure to address this crisis and react, redress, and resolve this. We call on the federal government to declare a Decade of Action & Healing to address the crisis of missing, murdered, and trafficked Indian people. That last sentence, which begins “We call on the federal government," is today a sick joke and no doubt the reason the report was scrubbed. Unless we are fabulously wealthy and preferably white, we can’t “call on the federal government” for anything except cruelty, which the president of that government is happy to provide.       

[Author: Mother Mags] [Category: Crime, Indian, Indigenous, NativeAmerican, NotOneMore, MMIP, NotInvisibleAct] [Link to media]

— New Name, Same Commitment to Empowering Tribal Voters

 

at 3/27/25 2:32pm

Since 2018, the Northeast Arizona Native Democrats has been a stalwart defender of Arizona’s tribal voters and their access to the ballot. Our team is made up of majority tribal members who work year-round in their communities, driven by their passion for democracy and their love for their families and neighbors.  Arizona Native Democrats work on the Navajo Nation, and the White Mountain Apache and Hopi Tribal lands. In 2025, we will expand to include San Carlos & Yavapai Apache Lands, and the Tohono O’odham Nation.  Through consistent relational organizing work across communities in White Mountain Apache, Hopi, and the Navajo Nation, we have increased voter turnout and Democratic support on Arizona’s sovereign lands every cycle. Now, we are expanding to San Carlos Apache, Yavapai Apache, and Tohono O’odham to continue building on our success. In light of this expansion, we have changed our name to the Arizona Native Democrats. Our new identity reflects our statewide focus and affirms that we will leave no community behind in our efforts to empower and turnout native voters. Our 2025 expansion is just the start. Our long term goal is to have a presence in every tribal community in Arizona. With that in mind we thought we would introduce you to the people responsible for our success.  Loren Marshall, Field Director  First up, our Field Director, Loren Marshall. Loren is Diné, a citizen of the Navajo Nation. Her clans are (Tó’áhaní) Near the Water People clan, born for (Tódích’íi’nii) the Bitter Water clan. Her maternal grandfather was of the (Táchii’nii) Red Running Into the Water People clan, and her paternal grandfather is of the (Ma’ii Deeshgiizhnii) Coyote Pass Jemez clan. As Field Director, Loren oversees our efforts across tribal lands to register, empower, and turn out voters. She identifies areas of highest needs and creates programs designed to fulfill those needs. She has been working to strengthen Indigenous political power and increase voter participation in rural Native communities since 2020.  Next, Missa Foy. Missa is the Programs Director for the Arizona Native Democrats. Missa is our team leaderher job is to ensure that our organizers on the ground have the resources and support they need to do effective outreach in their communities. She began organizing on sovereign lands in 2018. In addition to her work with Arizona Native Democrats, Missa serves as the Chair of the Navajo County Democratic Party, a co-chair of the Arizona Democratic Party Progressive Caucus and sits on the board of the non-profit Arizona Native Vote.  Missa Foy, Programs Director (Left) & Janice Ben, Family Votes Coordinator (Right)  Another valued member of our team is Janice Ben. Janice serves as our Family Votes Coordinator, providing support and guidance to over 375 matriarchs across Arizona’s sovereign lands who are actively working with their families and neighbors to ensure their communities are up-to-date on the issues most pressing to them and ready to cast their ballots. Janice is Dine. Her clans are (Tachiinii) Red Running into the Water People clan, born for (Kin yaa aanii) Towering house clan. Her maternal grandfather was of the (Bit ah nii) Within his cover clan, and her paternal grandfather was of the (Kin lichii nii) Red House clan. Her journey in community organizing has been dynamic and fulfilling, having served as a tribal organizer for four different organizations since 2008. Janice previously worked on Voter Registration efforts and addressing challenges like the need for Google Plus Codes to provide physical addresses in our rural Arizona. Kasheena Miles, Youth Votes Coordinator  Kasheena Miles, Arizona Native Democrats Youth Votes Coordinator, joined our team in the 2024 cycle. Kasheena comes from Whiteriver, the heart of White Mountain Apache. Her passion for youth began when she was in high school, where she took part in local youth councils. From there it sparked an interest to promote community service, leadership skills, and encouraging our youth to tell their own stories. By working with these students, she gained different perspectives and feedback on what is important to them. Her job is to provide safe spaces, resources, and tools to help youth solve these issues. Letting them take the lead has helped them build confidence in not only themselves but for any task given to them. Amber Faith, Finance & Communications Director Our newest team member is Amber Faith, our Communications and Finance Director. Amber is a native Arizonan and steadfast Democrat, who is passionate about ensuring access to the vote for all. Her job is to raise funds to enable the work of the Arizona Native Democrats Team on the ground by telling stories from the field in a compelling and persuasive way. She has worked for Democrats across the state running for office at all levels of government, and is proud to play her role in uplifting voters.  Lorraine Coin is the Senior Field Coordinator for the Arizona Native Democrats. She is a member of the Hopi Tribe and resides on the Third Mesa in Bacavi Village with her husband and family. She is a member of the Coyote Clan, and currently works with the Arizona Native Democrats as a Senior Field Coordinator. Prior to her position with Arizona Native Democrats, she worked with Arizona Native Vote as a Field Organizer, and is currently a Board Member of Arizona Native Vote. Lorraine came to work with A.N.D. in 2015 the same year she first registered to vote at the age of 58. Lorraine enjoys her job because every day is different and she gets to meet people from all walks of life and educate her community's youth and elderly about the importance of voting. Lorraine Coin, Senior Field Coordinator (Left) & Joe Bia, Compliance & Outreach Coordinator (Right)  Last but certainly not least, Joe Bia is the Compliance and Outreach Coordinator for the Arizona Native Democrats. Fondly referred to as the “ledger avenger” by the team, Joe oversees our books and ensures that our funds are spent responsibly and in compliance with both federal and state laws. He also provides outreach support to the team, ensuring that people know about our events and programs. Joe is Dine and his clan is Bit’ahnii (Under His Cover People), born for Tódích’íi’nii (The Bitter Water People). His maternal grandfather is Naakaii Dine’é (The Mexican People), and his paternal grandfather is Tłááshchí’í (The Red Cheeks People). At Arizona Native Democrats, we have a dynamic, experienced, and passionate team, who work tirelessly to uplift native voters everywhere. Every dollar we raised keeps our team on the ground, organizing and providing mutual aid to uplift Arizona’s sovereign communities in a meaningful and lasting way. Please consider supporting us with a donation to fund our expansion. Donations can be made at: secure.actblue.com/… To learn more about the Arizona Native Democrats visit: www.arizonanativedemocrats.org. 

[Author: NEAZNativeDemocrats] [Category: Arizona, Recommended, NativeVotes] [Link to media]

— Indians 201: Terminating American Indian reservations

 

at 3/27/25 8:15am

In 1945 the official governmental policies of the United States began a twenty-year period known as the Termination Era. As with many earlier government policies, Indians were rarely consulted. Termination was intended to end Indian reservations and eradicate American Indian cultures so that Indians could be fully assimilated into a mythical mainstream American culture. In an article in Chronicles of Oklahoma, historian Richard Lowitt writes: “This new approach was intended to make Indians, as rapidly as possible, subject to the same laws and entitled to the same rights and responsibilities that pertained to all other American citizens.” In the philosophy of termination, American Indian cultures were considered to be irrelevant at best and anti-American at worst. In a chapter in The History of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana, 1800-2000, David Miller writes: “Reservations were considered the product of separate and unequal treatment, with little understanding of what treaties or negotiated executive agreements meant to Indian people.” The termination idea was to force individual Indians to assimilate into mainstream, English-speaking, Christian American society by getting rid of Indian reservations; by terminating all treaty obligations to Indian nations; and by terminating all government programs intended to aid Indians. With little understanding of the historical, cultural, and legal basis of reservations, the proponents of termination viewed reservations as a form of segregation which retarded the assimilation of individual Indians. Termination was intended to dismantle the reservation system, to transfer the natural resource wealth of the reservations to private non-Indian corporations, and to place Indians at the mercy of local state and county governments. Historian Katrine Barber, in her book Death of Celilo Falls, summarizes termination this way: “Termination required that the federal government relinquish its responsibility to Indian nations and shift those to state and county governments. Terminationists hoped to dismantle the reservation system and get the federal government ‘out of the Indian business.’” In an article in The Conversation, Kerri Malloy reports: “Officially, this policy ended the tribes’ status as wards of the United States in order ‘to grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship.’” Former U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell wrote: “In Washington’s infinite wisdom, it was decided that tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years.” The Nez Perce Tribe put it this way: “This era marked another abrupt change in what can only be described as a schizophrenic federal Indian policy.” The inspiration for the termination argument stemmed in part from a sense of innate superiority by non-Indians, and in part it involved money. It would be cheaper for the United States, which was now heavily committed to rebuilding the war-torn countries and economies of their former enemies, to do away with treaty rights, tribal governments, and support for Indian programs. In his chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 8: California, Edward Castillo writes: “After the war, as the United States spent millions of dollars rebuilding Germany and Japan, the government hoped to rid itself of its embarrassing failure to ‘rebuild’ Indian nations by simply withdrawing government aid to Indian people.” In his essay in American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, former Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell explains that the idea at the time was: “If we get rid of ‘tribes,’ we can avoid responsibility to individual Indians and save lots of money.” Under termination reservation lands could be sold and would be subject to local property taxes, a concept strongly supported by local governments which had traditionally been anti-Indian. Following World War II, the United States underwent a massive housing boom. This meant that there was an increased demand for natural resources, particularly timber. Many of the tribes which were initially selected for termination had valuable timber and mineral resources. With termination, these resources could be privatized—that is, transferred from the public domain to the ownership of large corporations—and then developed. Termination was set against the backdrop of the Cold War in which the United States saw itself as being involved in a deadly struggle against Communism to maintain its way of life. Historian Mark Miller, in his book Forgotten Tribes: Unrecognized Indians and the Federal Acknowledgment Process, writes: “Caught up in the growing Cold War hysteria of the time, many Americans again viewed Indians as aliens and even equated tribalism with communism and anti-Americanism.”  In her book American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture, sociologist Joane Nagel writes that during the termination era: “…federal Indian policy remained frozen in the policy mold stamped during a conservative cold war-period policy epoch that stressed patriotism, American individual initiative, and national unity and pride.” During this period, the distinctiveness of American Indians was seen as being un-American. Historian Thomas Cowger, in his book The National Congress of American Indians: The Founding Years, puts it this way: “The anticommunist spirit of postwar America demanded conformity and tended to discourage the preservation of Indian culture and the communal lifestyle of Indians.” In his book The Qualla Cherokee: Surviving in Two Worlds, sociologist Laurence French writes: “Termination emerged as the McCarthy era solution to Indian communism.” He goes on to say: “This solution was designed to force American Indians into a capitalist corporation environment thereby forcing them to compete within the larger dominant society.” Failure would, of course, clearly indicate that Indians are morally and genetically inferior. In the anti-Communist hysteria of the time, many people viewed Indians as aliens and viewed tribal ownership of land as a form of Communism and therefore un-American. To be Indian with a distinct history and culture was viewed as anti-American. Another aspect of termination was a political philosophy of states’ rights: often used as a shorthand designation giving tacit approval to racial discrimination. Returning to the anti-Indian racism of the nineteenth century, Indians would have little support from local governments. In his chapter in The Impact of Indian History on the Teaching of United States History, historian Alvin Josephy writes: “Prominent among the complainers were the aggrandizing interests, still coveting Indian lands and resources, and urging the end of reservations, tribes, treaties, and trust protections, and the turning over of Indians and their possessions to the jurisdiction of the states.” In their chapter in The Impact of Indian History on the Teaching of United States History, Richard West and Kevin Gover write: “Much of this unhappiness was rooted in simple racism, but some was based on the fact that non-Indian businessmen no longer had free reign to plunder reservation resources.” Many of the promoters of termination viewed Indian reservations as a form of racial segregation. Historian Warren Metcalf, in his book Termination’s Legacy: The Discarded Indians of Utah, writes: “Many commentators of the 1950s took the position that preserving Indian culture on reservations was really an insidious form of segregation.” The cry used by those who wished to return to assimilation and to terminate the relationship between the tribes and the federal government was “Free the Indian.” In order to free Indians from federal control, it was first necessary to destroy the tribal governments. While the mood of the post-war Congresses was clearly in favor of assimilation and termination, the first strong step toward assimilation as the official policy of the United States came in 1952 with   House Joint Resolution 698. This resolution called for an examination into the conduct of Indian affairs and a list of tribes which were sufficiently prepared for termination. Tribes subject to termination were supposed to have attained a significant degree of acculturation, to be economically self-supporting, and to be willing to accept the termination of government services. In response to the resolution, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) developed an extensive questionnaire for BIA officials to use in evaluating each tribe. The resulting report reflected the judgment of reservation superintendents and BIA staff. The following year, House Concurrent Resolution 108 called for the formal termination of Indian tribes. The writers of the resolution apparently were unaware that Indians are citizens (Congress had granted all Indians full citizenship in1924 and again in 1940) and that they were not “wards of the state”. Again, as usual, Indians were not consulted. The Resolution specifically expressed the intent of Congress as supporting unilateral withdrawal from its treaty obligations to Native Americans as soon as possible. Members of Congress were particularly interested in opening up Indian lands for sale and taxation, particularly if those lands contained valuable natural resources such as timber. The Klamath and the Menominee, whose reservations included valuable timberlands, were specifically singled out for early termination. In response to this resolution, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) held an emergency meeting in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to block the legislation. According to NCAI President Joe Garry (Coeur d’Alene): “Most of the pending legislation, if passed, would result in the end of our last holdings on this continent and destroy our dignity and distinction as the first inhabitants of this rich land.” Apache tribal leader Clarence Wesley told the NCAI delegates: “Either the United States government will recognize its treaty and statute obligations to the Indians . . . or we will continue down the bitter road toward complete destruction.” The End of Termination In 1970, President Richard Nixon asked Congress to pass a resolution repudiating termination. He told Congress: “Because termination is morally and legally unacceptable, because it produces bad practical results, and because the mere threat of termination tends to discourage greater self-sufficiency among Indian groups, I am asking the Congress to pass a new Concurrent Resolution which would expressly renounce, repudiate and repeal the termination policy as expressed in House Concurrent Resolution 108 of the 83rd Congress.” Since the end of termination, many of the terminated tribes have been recognized again by the United States government. Some of the terminated have state recognition but not federal recognition. Many of the terminated tribes are landless. Summarizing the Impact of Termination Between 1945 and 1960 Congress terminated more than one hundred tribes and small bands. This action left these groups with the same legal status as the unrecognized tribes. In his chapter in American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, Kevin Grover sums up termination this way: “Some 11,500 Indians lost their legal status as Indians, and nearly 1.4 million acres of land lost its status as trust land.” In an article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, anthropologist Patrick Haynal reports: “Terminated tribes may have maintained their legal status as sovereign governments, but they no longer passed or enforced laws and were unable to exercise their power to act as governments.” Historian Thomas Cowger notes: “Termination, in actuality, affected only a relatively small number of Indians, but it aroused tremendous fear and hostility throughout Indian country.” None of the terminated tribes improved economically: in most cases the impact of termination was to increase poverty. In her chapter in American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, law professor Rebecca Tsosie writes: “Without fail, the tribes selected for termination suffered terribly, being divested of valuable reservation lands as well as the political identity that sustained their survival as distinct nations within the United States.” On the other hand, many non-Indians became wealthy through this process and many corporations gained a great deal of wealth. In his introduction to A History of Utah’s American Indians, Forrest Cuch summarizes the various attempts at termination this way: “They proved to be of benefit to land-grabbing non-Indians but a miserable failure resulting in poverty for those tribes terminated, with the loss of thousands of acres of land on the part of individual Indians and their tribes.” In their book The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty, Vine Deloria and Clifford Lytle write: “We can mark out the two decades from 1945 to 1965 as the barren years. Self-government virtually disappeared as a policy and as a topic of interest. Indian affairs became a minor element in the American domestic scene; Indians became subject to new forms of social engineering, which conceived of them as a domestic racial minority, not as distinct political entities with a long history of specific legal claims against the United States.” Former Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash would later write: “The termination era may appear as a unique event, a failed experiment that was soon corrected. But termination was actually an expression of the national will that the ultimate goal of government policy toward Indians was ‘assimilation.’” In his book Deadliest Enemies: Law and the Making of Race Relations on and off Rosebud Reservation, Thomas Biolsi summarizes termination this way: “The termination period was characterized by the goal of terminating the special legal status of Indian people and Indian tribes and assimilating them into the nation.” In his book Command of the Waters: Iron Triangles, Federal Water Development, and Indian Water, Daniel McCool simply states: “The 1950s was a bad decade for American Indians.” More 20th Century American Indian Histories Often the 20th century is a forgotten era in American Indian histories. Many American history books never mention Indians in the 20th century, leaving readers with an impression that Indians are relicts of the past who have disappeared from America. Here are a few 20th century histories:  Indians 301: American Indians and World War I Indians 101: The Last Great Indian Council (1909) Indians 101: American Indians and the 1904 St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition Indians 101: World War II Veterans Come Home Indians 101: Changing Federal Indian Policies Through the Indian Reorganization Act Indians 101: Indians, Iwo Jima, and the American Flag   Indians 101: Boulder Dam and the Navajo Reservation Indians 101: The Navajo, Sheep, and the Federal Government

[Author: Ojibwa] [Category: AmericanIndians, BureauofIndianAffairs, History, NativeAmericanNetroots, RichardNixon, Termination, NationalCongressofAmericanIndians, Indians201, MenomineeIndians, KlamathIndians] [Link to media]

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